AMONG    MY    BOOKS 


BY 


JAMES  EUSSELL  LOWELL,  A.M., 

PROFESSOR    OF    BELLES-LETTRES  'ifr    HARVARD    COLLEGE. 


BOSTON: 
JAMES   R.   OSGOOD   AND   COMPANY, 

LATE  TICKNOR  &  FIELDS,  AND  FIELDS,  OSGOOD,  &  Co. 
I873- 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1870,  by 
JAMES     RUSSELL     LOWELL, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS  :  WELCH,  BIGELOW,  &  Co., 
CAMBRIDGE. 


A- 1 


To    F.    D.    L. 


Love  comes  and  goes  with  music  in  his  feet, 
And  tunes  young  pulses  to  his  roundelays  ; 

Love  brings  thee  this  :  will  it  persuade  thee,  Sweet, 
That  he  turns  proser  when  he  comes  and  stays? 


7f.it, 


CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

DRYDEN         x—            1 

WITCHCRAFT 81 

SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE 151 

NEW  ENGLAND  Two  CENTURIES  AGO         .        .       +  228 

LESSING  .       -.       ..        .:-      .      r.        * ,     •    '   •        •  291 

ROUSSEAU  AND  THE  SENTIMENTALISTS  349 


Library* 

Of 


DRYDEN.* 


BENVENUTO  CELLINI  tells  us  that  when,  in  his  boy 
hood,  he  saw  a  salamander  come  out  of  the  fire,  his 
grandfather  forthwith  gave  him  a  sound  beating,  that  he 
might  the  better  remember  so  unique  a  prodigy.  Though 
perhaps  in  this  case  the  rod  had  another  application 
than  the  autobiographer  chooses  to  disclose,  and  was 
intended  to  fix  in  the  pupil's  mind  a  lesson  of  veracity 
rather  than  of  science,  the  testimony  to  its  mnemonic 
virtue  remains.  Nay,  so  universally  was  it  once  believed 
that  the  senses,  and  through  them  the  faculties  of  obser 
vation  and  retention,  were  quickened  by  an  irritation  of 
the  cuticle,  that  in  France  it  was  customary  to  whip  the 
children  annually  at  the  boundaries  of  the  parish,  lest 
the  true  place  of  them  might  ever  be  lost  through  neg 
lect  of  so  inexpensive  a  mordant  for  the  memory.  From 
this  practice  the  older  school  of  critics  would  seem  to 

*  The  Dramatick  Works  of  JOHN  DRYDEX,  ESQ.  In  six  volumes. 
London:  Printed  for  Jacob  Tonson,  in  the  Strand.  MDCCXXXV. 
18mo. 

The  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Prose- Works  of  Jonx  DRYDEN,  now 
first  collected.  With  Notes  and  Illustrations.  An  Account  of  the  Life 
and  Writings  of  the  Author,  grounded  on  Original  and  Authentick  Docu 
ments;  and  a  Collection  of  his  Letters,  the  greatest  Part  of  which  has 
never  before  been  published.  By  EDMUND  MALOXK,  ESQ.  London: 
T.  Cadell  and  W.  Davies,  in  the  Strand.  4  vols.  8vo. 

The  Poetical  Works  of  JOHN  DRYDEX.  (Edited  by  MITFORD.) 
London:  W.  Pickering.  1832.  5  vols.  18mo. 

1  A 


.\  2     .  'DRYDEN. 

have  taken  a  hint  for  keeping  fixed  the  limits  of  good 
taste,  and  what  was  somewhat  vaguely  called  classical 
English.  To  mark  these  limits  in  poetry,  they  set  up 
as  Hermse  the  images  they  hud  made  to  them  of  Dryden, 
of  Pope,  and  later  of  Goldsmith.  Here  they  solemnly 
castigated  every  new  aspirant  in  verse,  who  in  turn  per 
formed  the  same  function  for  the  next  generation,  thus 
helping  to  keep  always  sacred  and  immovable  the  ne  plus 
ultra  alike  of  inspiration  and  of  the  vocabulary.  Though 
no  two  natures  were  ever  much  more  unlike  than  those 
of  Dryden  and  Pope,  and  again  of  Pope  and  Goldsmith, 
and  no  two  styles,  except  in  such  externals  as  could  be 
easily  caught  and  copied,  yet  it  was  the  fashion,  down 
even  to  the  last  generation,  to  advise  .young  writers  to 
form  themselves,  as  it  was  called,  on  these' excellent 
models.  Wordsworth  himself  began  in  this  school ;  and 
though  there  were  glimpses,  here  and  there,  of  a  direct 
study  of  nature,  yet  most  of  the  epithets  in  his  earlier 
pieces  were  of  the  traditional  kind  so  fatal  to  poetry  dur 
ing  great  part  of  the  last  century ;  and  he  indulged  in 
that  alphabetic  personification  which  enlivens  all  such 
words  as  Hunger,  Solitude,  Freedom,  by  the  easy  magic 
of  an  initial  capital. 

"  Where  the  green  apple  shrivels  on  the  spray, 
And  pines  the  unripened  pear  in  summer's  kindliest  ray, 
Even  here  Content  has  fixed  her  smiling  reign 
With  Independence,  child  of  high  Disdain. 
Exulting  'mid  the  winter  of  the  skies, 
Shy  as  the  jealous  chamois,  Freedom  flies, 
And  often  grasps  her  sword,  and  often  eyes." 

Here  we  have  every  characteristic  of  the  artificial  method, 
even  to  the  triplet,  which  Swift  hated  so  heartily  as  "  a 
vicious  way  of  rhyming  wherewith  Mr.  Dryden  abounded, 
imitated  by  all  the  bad  versifiers  of  Charles  the  Second's 
reign."  Wordsworth  became,  indeed,  very  early  the 
leader  of  reform ;  but,  like  Wesley,  he  endeavored  a  re- 


DRYDEN.  3 

form  within  the  Establishment.  Purifying  the  substance, 
he  retained  the  outward  forms  with  a  feeling  rather  than 
conviction  that,  in  poetry,  substance  and  form  are  but 
manifestations  of  the  same  inward  life,  the  one  fused 
into  the  other  in  the  vivid  heat  of  their  common  expres 
sion.  Wordsworth  could  never  wholly  shake  off  the  in 
fluence  of  the  century  into  which  he  was  born.  He 
began  by  proposing  a  reform  of  the  ritual,  but  it  went 
no  further  than  an  attempt  to  get  rid  of  the  words  of 
Latin  original  where  the  meaning  was  as  well  or  better 
given  in  derivatives  of  the  Saxon.  He  would  have 
stricken  out  the  "  assemble "  and  left  the  "  meet  to 
gether."  Like  Wesley,  he  might  be  compelled  by  neces 
sity  to  a  breach  of  the  canon  ;  but,  like  him,  he  was 
never  a  willing  schismatic,  and  his  singing  robes  were 
the  full  and  flowing  canonicals  of  the  church  by  law 
established.  Inspiration  makes  short  work  with  the 
usage  of  the  best  authors  and  ready-made  elegances  of 
diction ;  but  where  Wordsworth  is  not  possessed  by  his 
demon,  as  Moliere  said  of  Corneille,  he  equals  Thomson 
in  verbiage,  out-Miltons  Milton  in  artifice  of  style,  and 
Latinizes  his  diction  beyond  Dryden.  The  fact  was,  that 
he  took  up  his  early  opinions  on  instinct,  and  insensibly 
modified  them  as  he  studied  the  masters  of  what  may 
be  called  the  Middle  Period  of  English  verse.*  As  a 
young  man,  he  disparaged  Virgil  ("  We  talked  a  great 
deal  of  nonsense  in  those  days,"  he  said  when  taken  to 
task  for  it  later  in  life) ;  at  fifty-nine  he  translated  three 
books  of  the  ^Eneid,  in  emulation  of  Dryden,  though 
falling  far  short  of  him  in  everything  but  closeness,  as 
he  seems,  after  a  few  years,  to  have  been  convinced. 
Keats  was  the  first  resolute  and  wilful  heretic,  the  true 
founder  of  the  modern  school,  which  admits  no  cis-Eliza- 

*  His  "Character  of  a  Happy  Warrior "  (1806),  one  of  his  noblest 
poems,  has  a  dash  of  Dryden  in  it,  —  still  more  his  "Epistle  to  Shv 
George  Beaumont  (1811)." 


4  DRYDEN. 

bethan  authority  save  Milton,  whose  own  English  was 
formed  upon  those  earlier  models.  Keats  denounced  the 
authors  of  that  style  which  came  in  toward  the  close  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  and  reigned  absolute  through 
the  whole  of  the  eighteenth,  as 

"  A  schism, 

Nurtured  by  foppery  and  barbarism, 
who  went  about 

Holding  a  poor  decrepit  standard  out, 
Marked  with  most  flimsy  mottoes,  and  in  large 
The  name  of  one  Boileau!  " 

But  Keats  had  never  then  *  studied  the  writers  of  whom 
he  speaks  so  contemptuously,  though  he  might  have 
profited  by  so  doing.  Boileau  would  at  least  have 
taught  him  that  flimsy  would  have  been  an  apter  epithet 
for  the  standard  than  for  the  mottoes  upon  it.  Dryden 
was  the  author  of  that  schism  against  which  Keats  so  ve 
hemently  asserts  the  claim  of  the  orthodox  teaching  it 
had  displaced.  He  was  far  more  just  to  Boileau,  of 
whom  Keats  had  probably  never  read  a  word.  "  If  I 
would  only  cross  the  seas,"  he  says,  "  I  might  find  in 
France  a  living  Horace  and  a  Juvenal  in  the  person  of 
the  admirable  Boileau,  whose  numbers  are  excellent, 
whose  expressions  are  noble,  whose  thoughts  are  just, 
whose  language  is  pure,  whose  satire  is  pointed,  and 
whose  sense  is  just.  What  he  borrows  from  the  an 
cients  he  repays  with  usury  of  his  own,  in  coin  as  good 
and  almost  as  universally  valuable."  f 

Dryden  has  now  been  in  his  grave  nearly  a  hundred 
and  seventy  years  ;  in  the  second  class  of  English  poets 
perhaps  no  one  stands,  on  the  whole,  so  high  as  he; 
during  his  lifetime,  in  spite  of  jealousy,  detraction,  un 
popular  politics,  and  a  suspicious  change  of  faith,  his 
pre-eminence  was  conceded;  he  was  the  earliest  com- 

*  He  studied  Dryden's  versification  before  writing  his  "  Lamia." 
f  On  the  Origin  and  Progress  of  Satire.    See  Johnson's  counter 
opinion  in  his  life  of  Dryden. 


\  l  DRYDEN.  -jP  V  5 

plete  type  of  the  purely  literary  man,  in  the  modern 
sense  ;  there  is  a  singular  unanimity  in  allowing  him  a. 
certain  claim  to  greatness  which  would  be  denied  to  men 
as  famous  and  more  read,  — to  Pope  or  Swift,  for  exam 
ple  ;  he  is  supposed,  in  some  way  or  other,  to  have  re 
formed  English  poetry.  It  is  now  about  half  a  century 
since  the  only  uniform  edition  of  his  works  was  edited 
by  Scott.  No  library  is  complete  without  him,  no  name 
is  more  familiar  than  his,  and  yet  it  may  be  suspected 
that  few  writers  are  more  thoroughly  buried  in  that 
great  cemetery  of  the  "  British  Poets."  If  contempo 
rary  reputation  be  often  deceitful,  posthumous  fame  may 
be  generally  trusted,  for  it  is  a  verdict  made  up  of  the 
suffrages  of  the  select  men  in  succeeding  generations. 
This  verdict  has  been  as  good  as  unanimous  in  favor  of 
Dryden.  It  is,  perhaps,  worth  while  to  take  a  fresh  ob 
servation  of  him,  to  consider  him  neither  as  warning 
nor  example,  but  to  endeavor  to  make  out  what  it  is 
that  has  given  so  lofty  and  firm  a  position  to  one  of  the 
most  unequal,  inconsistent,  and  faulty  writers  that  ever 
lived.  He  is  a  curious  example  of  what  we  often  re 
mark  of  the  living,  but  rarely  of  the  dead,  —  that  they 
get  credit  for  what  they  might  be  quite  as  much  as  for 
what  they  are,  —  and  posterity  has  applied  to  him  one 
of  his  own  rules  of  criticism,  judging  him  by  the  best 
rather  than  the  average  of  his  achievement,  a  thing  pos 
terity  is  seldom  wont  to  do.  On  the  losing  side  in  poli 
tics,  it  is  true  of  his  polemical  writings  as  of  Burke's,  — • 
whom  in  many  respects  he  resembles,  and  especially  in 
that  supreme  quality  of  a  reasoncr,  that  his  mind  gath 
ers  not  only  heat,  but  clearness  and  expansion,  by  its 
own  motion,  —  that  they  have  won  his  battle  for  him  in 
the  judgment  of  after  times. 

To  us,  looking  back  at  him,  he  gradually  becomes  a 
singularly  interesting  and  even  picturesque  figure.     He 


6  DRYDEN. 

is,  in  more  senses  than  one,  in  language,  in  turn  of 
thought,  in  style  of  mind,  in  the  direction  of  his  activ- 
/  ity,  the  first  of  the  moderns.  He  is  the  first  literary 
man  who  was  also  a  man  of  the  world,  as  we  under 
stand  the  term.  He  succeeded  Ben  Jonson  as  the  ac 
knowledged  dictator  of  wit  and  criticism,  as  Dr/ Johnson, 
•  after  nearly  the  same  interval,  succeeded  him.  All  ages 
are,  in  some  sense,  ages  of  transition  ;  but  ther6  are  times 
when  the  transition  is  more  marked,  more  rapid ;  and  it 
is,  perhaps,  an  ill  fortune  for  a  man  of  letters  to  arrive 
at  maturity  during  such  a  period,  still  more  to  represent 
in  himself  the  change  that  is  going  on,  and  to  be  an 
efficient  cause  in  bringing  it  about.  Unless,  like  Goethe, 
he  is  of  a  singularly  uncontemporaneou^  nature,  capable 
of  being  tutta  in  se  romita,  and  of  running  parallel  with 
his  time  rather  than  being  sucked  into  its  current,  he  will 
be  thwarted  in  that  harmonious  development  of  native 
force  which  has  so  much  to  do  with  its  steady  and  suc 
cessful  application.  Dryden  suffered,  no  doubt,  in  this 
\  way.  Though  in  creed  he  seems  to  have  drifted  back- 
I  ward  in  an  eddy  of  the  general  current ;  yet  of  the  in- 
\  tellectual  movement  of  the  time,  so  far  certainly  as 
literature  shared  in  it,  he  could  say,  with  ^Eneas,  not 
only  that  he  saw,  but  that  himself  was  a  great  part  of 
it.  That  movement  was,  on  the  whole,  a  downward  one, 
from  faith  to  scepticism,  from  enthusiasm  to  cynicism, 
from  the  imagination  to  the  understanding.  It  was  in 
a  direction  altogether  away  from  those  springs  of  imagi 
nation  and  faith  at  which  they  of  the  last  age  had  slaked 
the  thirst  or  renewed  the  vigor  of  their  souls.  Dryden 
himself  recognized  that  indefinable  and  gregarious  in 
fluence  which  we  call  nowadays  the  Spirit  of  the  Age, 
when  he  said  that  "  every  Age  has  a  kind  of  universal 
Genius."  *  He  had  also  a  just  notion  of  that  in  which 
*  Essay  on  Dramatick  Poesy. 


DRYDEN.  7 

he  lived ;  for  he  remarks,  incidentally,  that  "  all  know 
ing  ages  are  naturally  sceptic  and  not  at  all  bigoted, 
which,  if  I  am  not  much  deceived,  is  the  proper  charac 
ter  of  our  own."  *  It  may  be  conceived  that  he  was 
even  painfully  half-aware  of  having  fallen  upon  a  time 
incapable,  not  merely  of  a  great  poet,  but  perhaps  of 
any  poet  at  all ;  for  nothing  is  so  sensitive  to  the  chill 
of  a  sceptical  atmosphere  as  that  enthusiasm  which,  if 
it  be  not  genius,  is  at  least  the  beautiful  illusion  that 
saves  it  from  the  baffling  quibbles  of  self-consciousness. 
Thrice  unhappy  he  who,  born  to  see  things  as  they' 
might  be,  is  schooled  by  circumstances  to  see  them  as 
!  people  say  they  are,  —  to  read  God  in  a  prose  translation. 
Such  was  Dryden's  lot.  and  such,  for  a  good  part  of  his 
days,  it  was  by  his  own  choice.  He  who  was  of  a  stat 
ure  to  snatch  the  torch  of  life  that  flashes  from  lifted 
hand  to  hand  along  the  generations,  over  the  heads  of 
inferior  men,  chose  rather  to  be  a  link-boy  to  the  stews. 
As  a  writer  for  the  stage,  he  deliberately  adopted  and 
repeatedly  reaffirmed  the  maxim  that 

"  He  who  lives  to  please,  must  please  to  live." 

Without  earnest  convictions,  no  great  or  sound  literature 
is  conceivable.  But  if  Dryden  mostly  wanted  that  in 
spiration  which  comes  of  belief  in  and  devotion  to 
something  nobler  and  more  abiding  than  the  present 
moment  and  its  petulant  need,  he  had,  at  least,  the  next 
best  thing  to  that,  —  a  thorough  faith  in  himself.  Ho 
was,  moreover,  a  man  of  singularly  open  soul,  and  of  a 
temper  self-confident  enough  to  be  candid  even  with 
himself.  His  mind  was  growing  to  the  last,  his  judg 
ment  widening  and  deepening,  his  artistic  sense  refining 
itself  more  and  more.  He  confessed  his  errors,  and  was 
not  ashamed  to  retrace  his  steps  in  search  of  that  bet- 

*  Life  of  Lucian. 


DRYDEN. 


ter  knowledge  which  the  omniscience  of  superficial  study 
,   had  disparaged.  <  Surely  an  intellect  that  is  still  pliable 
j'  at  seventy  is  a  phenomenon  as  interesting  as  it  is  rare/. 
But  at  whatever  period  of  his   life  we  look  at  Dryden, 
and  whatever,  for  the  moment,  may  have  been  his  poetic 
creed,  there  was  something  in  the   nature  of  the  man 
that  would  not  be  wholly  subdued  to  what  it  worked  in. 
There  are  continual  glimpses  of  something  in  him  great 
er  than  he,  hints  of  possibilities  finer  than  anything  he 
has  done.     You  feel  that  the  whole  of  him  was  better 
•    than  any  random  specimens,  though  of  his  best,  seem  to 
prove.     Incessu  patet,  he  has  by  times  the  large  stride 
of  the  elder  race,   though  it  sinks  too  often  into  the 
slouch  of  a  man  who  has  seen  better  days,     His  grand 
air  may,  in  part,  spring  from  a  habit  of  easy  superiority 
to  his  competitors ;  but  must  also,  in  part,  be  ascribed 
to  an  innate  dignity  of  character.     That  this  pre-emi 
nence  should  have  been  so  generally  admitted,  during 
his  life,  can    only  be  explained  by  a   bottom  of  good 
sense,    kindliness,    and    sound   judgment,    whose    solid 
worth  could  afford  that  many  a  flurry  of  vanity,  petu 
lance,  and  even  error  should  flit  across  the  surface  and 
be  forgotten.     Whatever  else  Dryden  may  have  been, 
the  last  and  abiding  impression  of  him  is,  that  he  was 
thoroughly  manly  ;  and  while  it  may  be  disputed  wheth- 
,  er  he  was  a  great  poet,  it  may  be  said  of  him,  as  Words 
worth  said  of  Burke,  that  "  he  was  by  far  the  greatest 
man  of  his  age,  not  only  abounding  in  knowledge  him 
self,  but  feeding,  in  various  directions,  his  most  able  con 
temporaries."  * 

Dryden  was  born  in  1631.  He  was  accordingly  six 
years  old  when  Jonson  died,  was  nearly  a  quarter  of 
a  century  younger  than  Milton,  and  may  have  personally 

*  "  The  great  man  must  have  that  intellect  which  puts  in  motion 
the  intellect  of  others."  —  LANDOR,  Im.  Con.,  Diogenes  and  Plato. 


DKYDEN. 

known  Bishop  Hall,  the  first  English  satirist,  who  was 
living  till  1656.  On  the  other  side,  he  was  older  than 
Swift  by  thirty-six,  than  Addison  by  forty-one,  and  than 
Pope  by  fifty-seven  years.  Dennis  says  that  "  Dryden, 
for  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life,  was  much  acquainted 
with  Addison,  and  drank  with  him  more  than  he  ever 
used  to-do,  probably  so  far  as  to  hasten  his  end,"  being 
commonly ~"  an  extreme  sober  man."  Pope  tells  us  that, 
in  his  twelfth  year,  he  "  saw  Dryden,"  perhaps  at  Will's, 
perhaps  in  the  street,  as  Scott  did  Burns.  Dryden  him 
self  visited  Milton  now  and  then,  and  was  intimate  with 
Davenant,  who  could  tell  him  of  Fletcher  .and  Jonson 
from  personal  recollection.  Thus  he  stands  between  the 
age  before  and  that  which  followed  him,  giving  a  hand 
to  each.  His  father  was  a  country  clergyman,  of  Puri 
tan  leanings,  a  younger  son  of  an  ancient  county  family. 
The  Puritanism  is  thought  to  have  come  in  with  the 
poet's  great-grandfather,  who  made  in  his  will  the  some 
what  singular  statement  that  he  was  "assured  by  the  Holy 
Ghost  that  he  was  elect  of  God."  It  would  appear  from 
this  that  Dryden's  self-confidence  was  an  inheritance. 
The  solid  quality  of  his  mind  showed  itself  early.  He  him 
self  tells  us  that  he  had  read  Polybius  "  in  English,  with 
the  pleasure  of  a  boy,  before  he  was  ten  years  of  age,  and 
yet  even  then  had  some  dark  notions  of  the  prudence  with 
which  he  conducted  his  design.'"  *  The  concluding  words 
are  very  characteristic,  even  if  Dryden,  as  men  common 
ly  do,  interpreted  his  boyish  turn  of  mind  by  later  self- 
knowledge.  We  thus  get  a  glimpse  of  him  browsing 
—  for,  like  Johnson,  Burke,  and  the  full  as  distin 
guished  from  the  learned  men,  he  was  always  a  random 
reader  |  —  in  his  father's  library,  and  painfully  culling 

*  Character  of  Polybius  (1692). 

t  "  For  my  own  part,  who  must  confess  it  to  my  shame  that  I  never 
read  anything  but  for  pleasure."    Life  of  Plutarch  (1683). 
1* 


10  DRYDEN. 

here  and  there  a  spray  of  his  own  proper  nutriment 
from  among  the  stubs  and  thorns  of  Puritan  divinity. 
After  such  schooling  as  could  be  had  in  the  country, 
he  was  sent  up  to  Westminster  School,  then  under  the 
headship  of  the  celebrated  Dr.  Busby.  Here  he  made 
his  first  essays  in  verse,  translating,  among  other  school 
exercises  of  the  same  kind,  the  third  satire  of  Persius. 
In  1650  he  was  entered  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
and  remained  there  for  seven  years.  The  only  record 
of  his  college  life  is  a  discipline  imposed,  in  1652,  for 
"disobedience  to  the  Vice-Master,  and  contumacy  in 
taking  his  punishment,  inflicted  by  him."  Whether  this 
punishment  was  corporeal,  as  Johnson  insinuates  in  the 
similar  case  of  Milton,  we  are  ignorant.  He  certainly 
retained  no  very  fond  recollection  of  his  Alma  Mater,  for 
in  his  "  Prologue  to  the  University  of  Oxford  "  he  says :  — 

^S         "  Oxford  to  him  a  dearer  name  shall  be 
£V  Than  his  own  mother  university; 

Thebes  did  his  green,  unknoAving  youth  engage, 
He  chooses  Athens  in  his  riper  age." 

By  the  death  of  his  father,  in  1654,  he  came  into  pos 
session  of  a  small  estate  of  sixty  pounds  a  year,  from 
which,  however,  a  third  must  be  deducted,  for  his  moth 
er's  dower,  till  1676.  After  leaving  Cambridge,  he  be 
came  secretary  to  his  near  relative,  Sir  Gilbert  Pickering, 
at  that  time  Cromwell's  chamberlain,  and  a  member  of 
his  Upper  House.  In  1670  he  succeeded  Davenant  as 
Poet  Laureate,*  and  Howell  as  Historiographer,  with  a 
yearly  salary  of  two  hundred  pounds.  This  place  he 
lost  at  the  Revolution,  and  had  the  mortification  to  see 
his  old  enemy  and  butt,  Shadwell,  promoted  to  it,  as  the 
bej>t  poet  the  Whig  party  could  muster.  If  William  was 

*  Gray  says  petulantly  enough  that  "  Dryden  was  as  disgraceful  to 
the  office,  from  his  character,  as  the  poorest  scribbler  could  have 
been  from  his  verses."  — GEAY  to  MASON,  19th  December,  1767. 


DRYDEN.  11 

obliged  to  read  the  verses  of  his  official  minstrel,  Dryden 
was  more  than  avenged.  From  1688  to  his  death, 
twelve  years  later,  he  earned  his  bread  manfully  by  his 
pen,  withojji_aj^me_an  jc^m^lajiimg^and  with  no  allu 
sion  to  his  fallen  fortunes  that  is  not  dignified  and 
touching.  These  latter  years,  during  which  he  wTas  his 
own  man  again,  were  probably  the  happiest  of  his  life. 
In  1664  or  1665  he  married  Lady  Elizabeth  Howard, 
daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Berkshire.  About  a  hundred 
pounds  a  year  were  thus  added  to  his  income.  The 
marriage  is  said  not  to  have  been  a  happy  one,  and  per 
haps  it  was  not,  for  his  wife  wTas  apparently  a  weak- 
minded  woman  ;  but  the  inference  from  the  internal  evi 
dence  of  Dry  den's  plays,  as  of  Shakespeare's,  is  very 
untrustworthy,  ridicule  of  marriage  having  always  been. 
a  common  stock  in  trade  of  the  comic  writers. 

The  earliest  of  his  verses  that  have  come  down  to  us 
were  written  upon  the  death  o^  Lord  Hastings,  and  are 
as  bad  as  they  can  be,  —  a  kind  of  parody  on  the  worst 
lof  Donne.  They  have  every  fault  of  his  manner,  with 
out  a  hint  of  the  subtile  and  often  profound  thought 
that  more  than  redeems  it.  As  the  Doctor  himself 
would  have  said,  here  is  Donne  outdone.  The  young 
nobleman  died  of  the  small-pox,  and  Dryden  exclaims 
pathetically,  — 

"  Was  there  no  milder  way  than  the  small-pox, 
The  very  filthiness  of  Pandora's  box?  " 

He  compares  the  pustules  to_"  rosebuds  stuck  i'  the 
lily  skin  about,"  and  says  that 

"  Each  little  pimple  had  a  tear  in  it 
To  wail  the  fault  its  rising  did  commit." 

But  he  has  not  done  his  worst  yet,  by  a  great  deal. 
What  follows  is  even  finer  :  — 

"  No  comet  need  foretell  his  change  drew  on, 
Whose  corpse  might  seem  a  constellation.  t 


12  DRYDEN. 

0,  had  he  died  of  old,  how  great  a  strife 
Had  been  who  from  his  death  should  draw  their  life  h    « 
Who  should,  by  one  rich  draught,  become  whate'er. 
Seneca,  Cato,  Xuma,  Cassar,  were, 
Learned,  virtuous,  pious,  great,  and  have  by  this 
An  universal  metempsychosis! 
Must  all  these  aged  sires  in  one  funeral 
, Expire?  all  die  in  one  so  young,  so  small?  " 

It  is  said  that  one  of  Allston's  early  pictures  was 
brought  to  him,  after  he  had  long  forgotten  it,  and  his 
opinion  asked  as  to  the  wisdom  of  the  young  artist's  per 
severing  in  the  career  he  had  chosen.  Allston  advised 
his  quitting  it  forthwith  as  hopeless.  Could  the  same 
experiment  have  been  tried  with  these  verses  upon  Dry- 
den,  can  any  one  doubt  that  his  counsel  would  have 
-  been  the  same  1  It  should  be  remembered,  however, 
that  he  was  barely  turned  eighteen  when  they  were 
•written,  and  the  tendency  of  his  style  is  noticeable  in  so 
early  an  abandonment  of  the  participial  ed  in  learned  and 
aged.  In  the  next  year  he  appears  again  in  some 
commendatory  verses  prefixed  to  the  sacred  epigrams  of 
his  friend,  John  Hoddesdou.  In  these  he  speaks  of  the 
author  as  a 

"  Young  eaglet,  who,  thy  nest  thus  soon  forsook, 
So  lofty  and  divine  a  course  hast  took 
As  all  admire,  before  the  down  begin 
To  peep,  as  yet,  upon  thy  smoother  chin." 

Here  is  almost  every  fault  which  Dryden's  later 
nicety  would  have  condemned.  But  perhaps  there  is 
j  no  schooling  so  good  for  an  author  as  his  own  youthful 
indiscretions.  After  this  effort  Dryden  seems  to  have 
lain  fallow  for  ten  years,  and  then  he  at  length  reappears 
in  thirty-seven  "  heroic  stanzas  "  on  the  death  of  Crom 
well.  The  versification  is  smoother,  but  the  conceits 
are  there  again,  though  in  a  milder  form.  The  verse  is 
modelled  after  "  Gondibert."  A  single  image  from  na- 


13 


ture  (he  was  almost  always  happy  in  these)  gives  some 
hint  of  the  malirer  Dryden  :  — 

"  And  Avars,  like  mists  that  rise  against  the  sun, 
Made  him  but  greater  seem,  not  greater  grow." 

Tw*  •ther  verses, 

"  And  the  isle,  when  her  protecting  genius  went, 
Upon  his  obsequies  loud  sighs  conferred," 

are  interesting,  because  they  show  that  he  had  been 
studying  the  early  poems  of  Milton.  He  has  contrived 
to  bury  under  a  rubbish  of  verbiage  one  of  the  most 
purely  imaginative  passages  ever  written  by  the  great 

Puritan  poet. 

"  From  haunted  spring  and  dale, 

Edged  with  poplar  pale, 
The  parting  genius  is  with  sighing  sent." 

This  is  the  more  curious  because,  twenty-four  years  after^ 
wards,  he  says,  in  defending  rhyme  :  "  Whatever  causes 
he  [Milton]  alleges  for  the  abolishment  of  rhyme,  his  own 
particular  reason  is  plainly  this,  that  rhyme  was  not  his 
talent ;  he  had  neither  the  ease  of  doing  it  nor  the 
graces  of  it  :  which  is  manifest  in  his  Juvenilia,  .... 
where  his  rhyme  is  always  constrained  and  forced,  and 
comes  hardly  from  him,  at  an  age  when  the  soul  is  most 
pliant,  and  the  passion  of  love  makes  almost  every  man 
a  rhymer,  though  not  a  poet."*  It  was  this,  no  doubt, 
that  heartened  Dr.  Johnson  to  say  of  "  Lycidas  "  that 
"  the  diction  was  harsh,  the  rhymes  uncertain,  and  the 
numbers  unpleasing."  It  is  Dryden's  excuse  that  his 
characteristic  excellence  is  to  argue  persuasively  and 
powerfully,  whether  in  verse  or  prose,  and  that  he  was 
amply  endowed  with  the  most  needful  quality  of  an 
advocate,  —  to  be  always  strongly  and  wholly  of  his 
present  way  of  thinking,  whatever  it  might  be.  Next 

*  Essay  on  the  Origin  and  Progress  of  Satire. 


14  DRYDEN. 

we  have,  in  1660,  "  Astrsea  Redux  "  on  the  "  happy  res 
toration  "  of  Charles  II.  In  this  also  we  can  forebode 
little  of  the  full-grown  Dryden  but  his  defects.  We  see 
his  tendency  to  exaggeration,  and  to  confound  physical 
with  metaphysical,  as  where  he  says  of  the  ships,  tfrat 
brought  home  the  royal  brothers,  that 

"  The  joyful  London  meets 
The  princely  York,  himself  alone  a  freight, 
The  S \viftsure  groans  beneath  great  Gloster's  weight 

and  speaks  of  the 

"  Repeated  prayer 
Which  stormed  the  skiee  and  ravished  Charles  from  thence." 

\ 

There  is  also  a  certain  everydayness,  not  to  say  vul 
garity,  of  phrase,  which  Dryden  never  wholly  refined 
away,  and  which  continually  tempts  us  to  sum  up  at 
once  against  him  as  the  greatest  poet  that  ever  was  or 
could  be  made  wholly  out  of  prose. 

"  Heaven  would  no  bargain  for  its  blessings  drivfe  " 

is  an  example.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  a  few 
verses  almost  worthy  of  his  best  days,  as  these  :  — 

jgfV 

"  Some  lazy  ages  lost  in  sleep  and  ease, 
No  action  leave  to  busy  chronicles ; 
Such  whose  supine  felicity  but  makes 
In  story  chasms,  in  epochas  mistakes, 
O'er  whom  Time  gently  shakes  his  wings  of  down, 
Till  with  his  silent  sickle  they  are  mown." 

These  are  all  the  more  noteworthy,  that  Dryden,  un 
less  in  argiiment,  is  seldom  equal  for  six  lines  together. 
In  the  poem  to  Lord  Clarendon  (1662)  there  are  four 
verses  that  have  something  of  the  "  energy  divine  "  for 
which  Pope  praised  his  master. 

"  Let  envy,  then,  those  crimes  within  you  see 
From  which  the  happy  never  must  be  free ; 
Envy  that  does  with  misery  reside, 
The  joy  and  the  revenge  of  ruined  pride." 


DRYDEN.  15 

In  his  "Aurengzebe"  (1675)  there  is  a  passage,  of 
which,  as  it  is  a  good  example  of  Dryden,  I  shall  quote    ' 
the  whole,  though  my  purpose  aims  mainly  at  the  latter 
verses  :  — 

"  When  I  consider  life,  't  is  all  a  cheat; 
Yet,  fooled  with  Hope,  men  favor  the  deceit, 
Trust  on,  and  think  to-morrow  will  repay; 
To-morrow  's  falser  than  the  former  day, 
Lies  worse,  and,  while  it  says  we  shall  be  blest 
With  some  new  joys,  cuts  off  what  we  possest. 
Strange  cozenage !  none  would  live  past  years  again, 
Yet  all  hope  pleasure  in  what  yet  remain, 
And  from  the  dregs  of  life  think  to  receive 
What  the  first  sprightly  running  could  not  give. 
I  'm  tired  of  waiting  for  this  chymic  gold 
Which  fools  us  young  and  beggars  us  when  old." 

The  "first  sprightly  running"  of  Dryden's  vintage 
was,  it  must  be  confessed,  a  little  muddy,  if  not  beery ; 
but  if  his  own  soil  did  not  produce  grapes  of  the  choicest 
flavor,  he  knew  where  they  were  to  be  had ;  and  his 
product,  like  sound  wine,  grew  better  the  longer  it  stood 
upon  the  lees.  He  tells  us,  evidently  thinking  of  him 
self,  that  in  a  poet,  "  from  fifty  to  threescore,  the  bal 
ance  generally  holds  even  in  our  colder  climates,  for  he 
loses  not  much  in  fancy,  and  judgment,  which  is  the  ef 
fect  of  observation,  still  increases.  His  succeeding  years 
afford  him  little  more  than  the  stubble  of  his  own  har 
vest,  yet,  if  his  constitution  be  healthful,  his  mind  may 
still  retain  a  decent  vigor,  and  the  gleanings  of  that  of 
Ephraim,  in  comparison  with  others,  will  surpass  the 
vintage  of  Abiezer."  *  Since  Chaucer,  none  of  our  poets 
has  had  a  constitution  more  healthful,  and  it  was  his  old  j 
age  that  yielded  the  best  of  him.  In  him  the  under 
standing  was,  perhaps,  in  overplus  for  his  entire  good 
fortune  as  a  poet,  and  that  is  a  faculty  among  the  earli-j 

*  Dedication  of  the  Georgics. 


16  DRYDEN. 

est  to  mature.  We  have  seen  him,  at  only  ten  rears,  di 
vining  the  power  of  reason  in  Polybius.*  (/.The  same  turn 
t>f  mind  led  him  later  to  imitate  the  French  school  of 
tragedy,  and  to  admire  in  Ben  Jonson  the  most  correct 
of  English  poets.}  It  was  his  imagination  that  needed 

V-  quickening,  and  It  is  very  curious  to  trace  through  his 
different  prefaces  the  gradual  opening  of  his  eyes  to  the 

/,  causes  of  the  solitary  pre-eminence  of  Shakespeare.  At 
first  he  is  sensible  of  an  attraction  towards  him  which 
he  cannot  explain,  and  for  which  he  apologizes,  as  if  it 
were  wrong.  But  he  feels  himself  drawn  more  and  more 
strongly,  till  at  last  he  ceases  to  resist  altogether,  and 
is  forced  to  acknowledge  that  there  is  something  in  this 
one  man  that  is  not  and  never  was  anywhere  else,  some 
thing  not  to  be  reasoned  about,  ineffable,  divine  ;  if  con 
trary  to  the  rules,  so  much  the  worse  for  them.  Lit  may 
be  conjectured  that  Dry  den's  Puritan  associations  may 
have  stood  in  the  way  of  his  more  properly  poetic  cul 
ture,  and  that  his  early  knowledge  of  Shakespeare  was 
slight.  He  tells  us  that  Davenant,  whom  he  could  not 
have  known  before  he  himself  was  twenty-seven,  first 
taught  him  to  admire  the  great  poet.  But  even  after 
his  imagination  had  become  conscious  of  its  prerogative, 
and  his  expression  had  been  ennobled  by  frequenting 
this  higher  society,  we  find  him  continually  dropping 
back  into  that  sermo  pedestris  which  seems,  on  the  whole, 
to  have  been  his  more  natural  element.  We  always  feel 
his  epoch  in  him,  that  he  was  the  lock  which  let  our  lan 
guage  down  from  its  point  of  highest  poetry  to  its  level 
of  easiest  and  most  gently  flowing-  prose.  His  enthusiasm 
needs  the  contagion  of  other  minds  to  arouse  it ;  but  his 
strong  sense,  his  command  of  the  happy  word,  his  wit, 

*  Dryclen's  penetration  is  always  remarkable.  Hfs  general  judg- 
.ment  of  Polybius  coincides  remarkably  with  that  of  Morarnsen,  (Rum. 
Gesch.  II.  448,  seq.) 


DRYDEN.  17 

which  is  distinguished  by  a  certain  breadth  and,  as  it 
were,  power  of  generalization,  as  Pope's  by  keenness  of  ^ 
edge  and  point,  were  his,  whether  he  would  or  no.  Ac 
cordingly,  his  poetry  is  often  best  and  his  verse  more 
flowing  where  (as  in  parts  of  his  version  of  the  twenty- 
ninth  ode  of  the  third  book  of  Horace)  he  is  amplifying 
the  suggestions  of  another  mind.*  Viewed  from  one 
side,  he  justifies  Milton's  remark  of  him,  that  "  he  was  ; 
a  good  rhymist,  but  no  poet."  ;To  look  at  all  sides,  and  I 
to  distrust  the  verdict  of  a  single  mood,  is,  no  doubt,  the  ] 
duty  of  a  critic.  But  how  if  a  certain  side  be  so  often 
presented  as  to  thrust  forward  in  the  memory  and  dis 
turb  it  in  the  effort  to  recall  that  total  impression  (for 
the  office  of  a  critic  is  not,  though  often  so  misunder 
stood,  to  say  guilty  or  not  guilty  of  some  particular  fact) 
which  is  the  only  safe  ground  of  judgment  1  It  is  the 
weight  of  the  whole  man,  not  of  one  or  the  other  limb  of 
him,  that  we  want.  Expende  Hannibalem.  Very  good, 
but  not  in  a  scale  capacioiisjonlj  of  a  single  quality  at  a  ^ 
time,  for  it  is 'their  union,  and  not  their  addition,  that 
assures  the  value  of  each  separately.  It  was  not  this  or 
that  which  gave  him  his  weight  in  council,  his  swiftness 
of  decision  in  battle  that  outran  the  forethought  of 
other  men,  —  it  was  Hannibal.  But  this  prosaic  ele 
ment  in  Dryden  will  force  itself  upon  me.~  As  I  read 
him,  I  cannot  help  thinking  of  an  ostrich,  to  be  classed 
with  flying  things,  and  capable,  what  with  leap  and  flap; 
together,  of  leaving  the  earth  for  a  longer  or  shorter; 
space,  but  loving  the  open  plain,  where  wing  and  foot, 
help  each  other  to  something  that  is  both  flight  and  run 
at  once.  What  with  his  haste  and  a  certain  dash,  which, 

*  "  I  have  taken  some  pains  to  make  it  my  masterpiece  in  English." 
Preface  to  Second  Miscellany.  Fox  said  that  it  "  was  better  than  the 
original."  J.  C.  Scaliger  said  of  Erasmus:  "Ex  alieno  ingenio  poeta, 
ex  suo  versificator." 


18  DRYDEN. 

according  to  our  mood,  we  may  call  florid  or  splendid,  he 
seems  to  stand  among  poets  where  Rubens  does  among 
painters,  —  greater,  perhaps,  as  a  colorist  than  an  artist, 
yet  great  here  also,  if  we  compare  him  with  any  but  the 
first. 

We  have  arrived  at  Dryden's  thirty-second  year,  and 
thus  far  have  found  little  in  him  to  warrant  an  augury 
that  he  was  ever  to  be  one  of  the  great  names  in  English 
literature,  the  most  perfect  type,  that  is,  of  his  class,  and 
that  class  a  high  one,  though  not  the  highest.  If  Joseph 
;  de  Maistre's  axiom,  Qui  n'a  pas  vaincu  a  trente  ans,  ne 
I  vaincra  jamais,  were  true,  there  would  be  little  hope  of 
him,  for  he  has  won  no  battle  yet.  But  there  is  some 
thing  solid  and  doughty  in  the  man,  that  can  rise  from 
defeat,  the  stuff  of  which  victories  are  made  in  due  time, 
*  when  we  are  able  to  choose  our  position  better,  and  the 
sun  is  at  our  back.  Hitherto  his  performances  have 
been  mainly  of  the  obbligato  sort,  at  which  few  men 
of  original  force  are  good,  least  of  all  Dryden,  who  had 
always  something  of  stiffness  in  his  strength.  Waller 
had  praised  the  living  Cromwell  in  perhaps  the  manliest 
verses  he  ever  wrote,  —  not  very  manly,  to  be  sure,  but 
really  elegant,  and,  on  the  whole,  better  than  those  in 
which  Dryden  squeezed  out  melodious  tears.  Waller, 
who  had  also  made  himself  conspicuous  as  a  volunteer 
Antony  to  the  country  squire  turned  Csesar, 

("  With  ermine  clad  and  purple,  let  him  hold 
A  royal  sceptre  made  of  Spanish  gold,") 

was  more  servile  than  Dryden  in  hailing  the  return  of 
ex  offido  Majesty.  He  bewails  to  Charles,  in  snuffling 

heroics, 

"  Our  sorrow  and  our  crime 
To  have  accepted  life  so  long  a  time, 
Without  you  here." 

A  weak  man,  put  to  the  test  by  rough  and  angry  times, 


DRYDEN.  19 

as  Waller  was,  may  be  pitied,  but  meanness  is  nothing 
but  contemptible  under  any  circumstances.  If  it  be  true 
that  "  every  conqueror  creates  a  Muse,"  Cromwell  was 
unfortunate.  Even  Milton's  sonnet,  though  dignified,  is 
reserved  if  not  distrustful.  Marvell's  "  Horatian  Ode," 
the  most  truly  classic  in  our  language,  is  worthy  of  its 
theme.  The  same  poet's  Elegy,  in  parts  noble,  and 
everywhere  humanly  tender,  is  worth  more  than  all  Car- 
lyle's  biography  as  a  witness  to  the  gentler  qualities  of 
the  hero,  and  of  the  deep  affection  that  stalwart  nature 
could  inspire  in  hearts  of  truly  masculine  temper.  As  it 
is  little  known,  a  few  verses  of  it  may  be  quoted  to  show 
the  difference  between  grief  that  thinks  of  its  object  and 
grief  that  thinks  of  its  rhymes  :  — 

"  Valor,  religion,  friendship,  prudence  died 
At  once  with  him,  and  all  that 's  good  beside, 
And  we,  death's  refuse,  nature's  dregs,  confined 
To  loathsome  life,  alas !  are  left  behind. 
Where  we  (so  once  we  used)  shall  now  no  more, 
To  fetch  day,  press  about  his  chamber-door, 
No  more  shall  hear  that  powerful  language  charm, 
Whose  force  oft  spared  the  labor  of  his  arm, 
No  more  shall  follow  where  he  spent  the  days 
In  Avar  or  counsel,  or  in  prayer  and  praise. 

I  saw  him  dead ;  a  leaden  slumber  lies, 

And  mortal  sleep,  over  those  wakeful  eyes ; 

Those  gentle  rays  under  the  lids  were  fled, 

Which  through  his  looks  that  piercing  sweetness  shed; 

That  port,  which  so  majestic  was  and  strong, 

Loose  and  deprived  of  vigor  stretched  along, 

All  withered,  all  discolored,  pale,  and  wan, 

How  much  another  thing !  no  more  That  Man ! 

0  human  glory !  vain !  0  death !  0  wings ! 

0  worthless  world !  0  transitory  things ! 

Yet  dwelt  that  greatness  in  his  shape  decayed 

That  still,  though  dead,  greater  than  Death  he  laid, 

And,  in  his  altered  face,  you  something  feign 

That  threatens  Death  he  yet  will  live  again." 

Such  verses  might  not  satisfy  Lindley  Murray,  but 


20  DRYDEN. 

they  are  of  that  higher  mood  which  satisfies  the  heart. 
These  couplets,  too,  have  an  energy  worthy  of  Milton's 
friend  :  — 

"  When  up  the  armed  mountains  of  Dunbar 
He  marched,  and  through  deep  Severn,  ending  war." 

"  Thee,  many  ages  hence,  in  martial  verse 
Shall  the  English  soldier,  ere  he  charge,  rehearse." 

On  the  whole,  one  is  glad  that  Dryden's  panegyric  on 
the  Protector  was  so  poor.  It  was  purely  official  verse- 
making.  Had  there  been  any  feeling  in  it,  there  had 
been  baseness  in  his  address  to  Charles.  As  it  is,  we 
may  fairly  assume  that  he  was  so  far  sincere  in  both 
cases  as  to  be  thankful  for  a  chance  to  exercise  himself 
in  rhyme,  without  much  caring  whether  upon  a  funeral 
or  a  restoration.  He  might  naturally  enough  expect 
that  poetry  would  have  a  better  chance  under  Charles 
than  under  Cromwell,  or  any  successor  with  Common 
wealth  principles.  Cromwell  had  more  serious  matters 
to  think  about  than  verses,  while  Charles  might  at  least 
care  as  much  about  them  as  it  was  in  his  base  good 
nature  to  care  about  anything  but  loose  women  and 
spaniels.  Dryden's  sound  sense,  afterwards  so  conspicu 
ous,  shows  itself  even  in  these  pieces,  when  we  can  get 
at  it  through  the  tangled  thicket  of  tropical  phrase. 
But  the  authentic  and  unmistakable  Dryden  first  mani 
fests  himself  in  some  verses  addressed  to  his  friend  Dr. 
Charlton  in  16G3.  We  have  first  his  common  sense, 
which  has  almost  the  point  of  wit,  yet  with  a  tang  of 
prose  :  • — 

"  The  longest  tyranny  that  ever  swayed       ~1 
Was  that  wherein  our  ancestors  betrayed 
Their  freeborn  reason  to  the  Stagyrite, 
And  made  his  torch  their  universal  light. 
So  truth,  while  only  one  supplied  the  state, 
Grew  scarce  and  dear  and  yet  sophisticate. 
Still  it  was  bought,  like  empiric  wares  or  charms, 
Hard  words  sealed  up  with  Aristotle's  arms." 


DRYDEN.  21 

Then  we  have  his  graceful  sweetness  of  fancy,  where  he 
speaks  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  New  World  :  — 

"  Guiltless  men  who  danced  away  their  time, 
Fresh  as  their  groves  and  happy  as  their  clime." 

And,    finally,    there    is   a    hint    of    imagination   where 
"  mighty    visions   of    the    Danish   race "   watch   round 
Charles   sheltered   in  Stonehenge    after   the  battle    of 
Worcester.     These  passages  might  have  been  written  by 
the  Dryden  whom  wf  fc^rn>.g  know  fifteen  years  later,  v 
They  have  the  advantage  that  he  wrote  them  to  please 
himself.     His  contemporary,  Dr.  Heylin,  said  of  French 
cooks,  that  "  their  trade  was  not  to  feed  the  belly,  but    V7 
the  palate."     Dryden  was  a  great  while  in  learning  this 
secret,  as  available  in  good  writing  as  in  cookery.     He 
strove  after  it,  but  his  thoroughly  English  nature,  to  the 
last,  would  too  easily  content  itself  with  serving  up  the 
honest  beef  of  his  thought,  without  regard  to  daintiness 
of  flavor  in  the   dressing   of  it.*  (  Of  the  best  English     [^ 
poetry,  it  might  be  said  that  it  is  understanding  aerated 
by'  imagination.   )  In  Dryden  the  solid  part  too  often  re- 
fused  to  mix  kindly  with  the  leaven,  either  remaining  * 
lumpish  or  rising  to  a  hasty  puffiness.  (  Grace  and  light-  , 
ness  were  with  him  much  more  a  laborious  achievement  | 
than  a  natural  gift,  and  it   is  all  the  more  remarkable 
that  he  should  so  often  have   attained  to  what  seems 
such    an   easy   perfection    in   both.  \    Always    a   hasty 

*  In  one  of  the  last  letters  he  ever  wrote,  thanking  his  cousin  Mrs. 
Steward  for  a  gift  of  marrow-puddings,  he  says :  "  A  chine  of  honest 
bacon  would  please  my  appetite  more  than  all  the  rnamnv-puddings ; 
for  I  like  them  better  plain,  having  a  very  vulgar  stomach."  So  of 
Cowley  he  says :  "  There  was  plenty  enough,  but  ill  sorted,  whole  pyra 
mids  of  sweetmeats  for  boys  and  women,  but  little  of  solid  meat  for 
men."  The  physical  is  a  truer  antitype  of  the  spiritual  man  than  we 
are  willing  to  admit,  and  the  brain  is  often  forced  to  acknowledge  the 
inconvenient  country-cousinship  of  the  stomach. 


22  DRYDEN. 

writer,*  he  was  long  in  forming  his  style,  and  to  the 
last  was  apt  .to  snatch  the  readiest  word  rather  than 
wait  for  the  fittest.  He  was  not  wholly  and  uncon 
sciously  poet,  but  a  thinker  who  sometimes  lost  himself 
on  enchanted  ground  and  was  transfigured  by  its  touch. 
This  preponderance  in  him  of  the  reasoning  over  the  in 
tuitive  faculties,  the  one  always  there,  the  other  flashing 
in  when  you  least  expect  it,  accounts  for  that  inequality 
and  even  incongruousness  in  his  writing  which  makes 
\  one  revise  his  judgment  at  every  tenth  page.  In  his 
prose  you  come  upon  passages  that  persuade  you  he  is 
a  poet,  in  spite  of  his  verses  so  often  turning  state's  evi 
dence  against  him  as  to  convince  you  he  is  none.  He 
is  a  prose-writer,  with  a  kind  of  ^Eolian  attachment.  For 
example,  take  this  bit  of  prose  from  the  dedication  of 
Hs  version  of  Virgil's  Pastorals,  1694  :  "He  found  the 
strength  of  his  genius  betimes,  and  was  even  in  his 
youth  preluding  to  his  Georgicks  and  his  ^Eneis.  He 
could  not  forbear  to  try  his  wings,  though  his  pinions 
were  not  hardened  to  maintain  a  long,  laborious  flight ; 
yet  sometimes  they  bore  him  to  a  pitch  as  lofty  as  ever 
he  was  able  to  reach  afterwards.  But  when  he  was  ad 
monished  by  his  subject  to  descend,  he  came  down  gen 
tly  circling  in  the  air  and  singing  to  the  ground,  like  a 
lark  melodious  in  her  mounting  and  continuing  her  song 
till  she  alights,  still  preparing  for  a  higher  flight  at  her 
next  sally,  and  tuning  her  voice  to  better  music."  This 

23  charming,  and  yet  even  this  wants  the   ethereal  tinc 
ture  that  pervades  the  style  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  making 

*  In  his  preface  to  "All  for  Love,"  he  says,  evidently  alluding  to 
himself:  "  If  he  have  &  friend  whose  hastiness  in  writing  is  his  great 
est  fault,  Hoi-ace  would  have  taught  him  to  have  minced  the  matter, 
and  to  have  called  it  readiness  of  thought  and  a  flowing  fancy."  And 
in  the  Preface  to  the  Fables  he  says  C>f  Homer :  "  This  vehemence  of 
his,  I  confess,  is  more  suitable  to  my  temper-"  He  makes  other  allu 
sions  to  it,  "*• . 


DRYDEN. 

it,  as  Burke  said  of  Sheridan's  eloquence,  "  neither  prose 
nor  poetry,  but  something  better  than  either."  Let  us 
compare  Taylor's  treatment  of  the  same  image  :  "  For 
so  have  I  seen  a  lark  rising  from  his  bed  of  grass  and 
soaring  upwards,  singing  as  he  rises,  and  hopes  to  get 
to  heaven  and  climb  above  the  clouds ;  but  the  poor 
bird  was  beaten  back  by  the  loud  sighings  of  an  eastern 
wind,  and  his  motion  made  irregular  and  inconstant, 
descending  more  at  every  breath  of  the  tempest  than 
it  could  recover  by  the  libration  and  frequent  weighing 
of  his  wings,  till  the  little  creature  was  forced  to  sit 
down  and  pant,  and  stay  till  the  storm  was  over,  and 
then  it  made  a  prosperous  'flight,  and  did  rise  and  sing 
as  if  it  had  learned  music  and  motion  of  an  angel  as 
he  passed  sometimes  through  the  air  about  his  minis 
tries  here  below."  Taylor's  fault  is  that  his  sentences 
too  often  smell  of  the  library,  put  what  an  open  air  is' 
here  !  How  unpremeditated  it  all  seems !  How  care 
lessly  he  knots  each  new  thought,  as  it  comes,  to  the 
one  before  it  with  an  and,  like  a  girl  making  lace ! 
And  what  a  slidingly  musical  use  he  makes  of  the  sibi 
lants  with  which  our  language  is  unjustly  taxed  by 
those  who  can  only  make  them  hiss,  not  sing !  There 
are  twelve  of  them  in  the  first  twenty  words,  fifteen  of 
which  are  monsyllables.  We  notice  the  structure  of 
Dryden's  periods,  but  this  grows  up  as  we  read.  It 
gushes,  like  the  song  of  the  bird  itself,  — 

"  In  profuse  strains  of  unpremeditated  art." 

Let  us  now  take  a  specimen  of  Dryden's  bad  prose  from 
one  of  his  poems.  I  open  the  "  Annus  Mirabilis  "  at 
random,  and  hit  upon  this  :  — 

"  Our  little  fleet  was  now  engaged  so  far, 
,  That,  like  the  swordfish  in  the  whale,  they  fought : 
The  combat  only  seemed  a  civil  war, 
Till  through  their  bowels  we  our  passage  wrought." 


24  DKYDEN, 

Is  this  Dryden,  or  Sternhold,  or  Shad  well,  those  Toms 
,  who  made  him  say  that  "  dulness  was  fatal  to  the  name 
1  of  Tom "  1  The  natural  history  of  Goldsmith  in  the 
verse  of  Pye  !  His  thoughts  did  not  "  voluntary  move 
harmonious  numbers."  'He  had  his  choice  between  prose 
and  verse,  and  seems  to  be  poetical  on  second  thought. 
I  do  not  speak  without  book.  He  was  more  than  half 
conscious  of  it  himself.  In  the  same  letter  to  Mrs. 
Steward,  just  cited,  he  says,  "  I  am  still  drudging  on, 
always  a  poet  and  never  a  good  one  "  ;  and  this  from  no 
mock-modesty,  for  he  is  always  handsomely  frank  in 
I  telling  us  whatever  of  his  own  doing  pleased  him.  This 
was  written  in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  and  at  about  the 
same  time  he  says  elsewhere  :  "What  judgment  I  had 
increases  rather  than  diminishes,  and  thoughts,  such  as 
they  are,  come  crowding  in  so  fast  upon  me  that  my 
only  difficulty  is  to  choose  or  to  reject,  to  run  them  into 
verse  or  to  give  them  the  other  harmony  of  prose  ;  I 
have  so  long  studied  and  practised  both,  that  they  are 
grown  into  a  habit  and  become  familiar  to  me."  *  I 
think  that  a  man  who  was  primarily  a  poet  would  hard 
ly  have  felt  this  equanimity  of  choice. 

I  find  a  confirmation  of  this  feeling  about  Dryden  in 
his  early  literary  loves.    His  taste  was  not  an  instinct,  but 

I  the  slow  result  of  reflection  and  of  the  manfulness  with 
\vhich  he  always  acknowledged  to  himself  his  own  mis 
takes.  In  this  latter  respect  few  men  deal  so  magnani 
mously  with  themselves  as  he,  and  accordingly  few  have 
A  been  so  happily  inconsistent.  Ancora  imparo  might 
have  served  him  for  a  motto  as  well  as  Michael  Angelo. 
His  prefaces  are  a  complete  log  of  his  life,  and  the  habit 
of  writing  them  was  a  useful  one  to  him,  for  it  forced 
him  to  think  with  a  pen  in  his  hand,  which,  according  to 
Goethe,  "  if  it  do  no  other  good,  keeps  the  mind  from 
*  Preface  to  the  Fables. 


DRYDEN.  25 

staggering  about."  In  these  prefaces  we  see  his  taste 
gradually  rising  from  Du  Bartas  to  Spenser,  from  Cowley 
to  Milton,  from  Corneille  to  Shakespeare.  "  I  remember 
when  I  was  a  boy,"  he  says  in  his  dedication  of  the 
"Spanish  Friar,"  1681,  "  I  thought  inimitable  Spenser  a 
mean  poet  in  comparison  of  Sylvester's  Du  Bartas,  and 
was  rapt  into  an  ecstasy  when  I  read  these  lines  :  — 

'  Now  when  the  winter's  keener  breath  began 
To  crystallize  the  Baltic  ocean, 
To  glaze  the  lakes,  to  bridle  up  the  floods, 
And  periwig  with  snow  *  the  baldpate  woods.' 

IV 

I  am  much  deceived  if  this  be  not  abominable  fustian. '*\ 
Swift,  in  his  "  Tale  of  a  Tub,"  has  a  ludicrous  passage  in'; 
this  style  :  "  Look  on  this  globe  of  earth,  you  will  find 
it  to  be  a  very  complete  and  fashionable  dress.  What  is 
that  which  some  call  land,  but  a  fine  coat  faced  with 
green  ]  or  the  sea,  but  a  waistcoat  of  water-tabby  1  Pro 
ceed  to  the  particular  works  of  creation,  you  will  find 
how  curious  journeyman  Nature  has  been  to  trim  up  the 
vegetable  beaux  ;  observe  how  sparkish  a  periwig  adorns 
the  head  of  a  beech,  and  what  a  fine  doublet  of  white 
satin  is  worn  by  the  birch."  The  fault  is  not  in  any  in- 
aptness  of  the  images,  nor  in  the  mere  vulgarity  of  the 
things  themselves,  but  in  that  of  the  associations  they 
awaken.  The  "prithee,  undo  this  button"  of  Lear, 
coming  where  it  does  and  expressing  what  it  does,  is  one 
of  those  touches  of  the  pathetically  sublime,  of  which 
only  Shakespeare  ever  knew  the  secret.  Herrick,  too, 
has  a  charming  poem  on  "  Julia's  petticoat,"  the  charm 

*  Wool  is  Sylvester's  word.  Dryden  reminds  us  of  Burke  in  this 
also,  that  he  always  quotes  from  memory  and  seldom  exactly.  His 
memory  was  better  for  things  than  for  words.  This  helps  to  explain 
the  length  of  timeittook  him  to  master  that  vocabulary  at  last  so  va 
rious,  full,  and  seemingly  extemporaneous.  He.  is  a  large  quoter, 
though,  with  his  usual  inconsistency,  he  says,  "  I  am  no  admirer  of 
quotations."  (Essay  on  Heroic  Plays.) 
2 


26  DRYDEN. 

being  that  he  lifts  the  familiar  and  the  low  to  the  region 
of  sentiment.  In  the  passage  from  Sylvester,  it  is  pre 
cisely  the  reverse,  and  the  wig  takes  as  much  from  the 
sentiment  as  it  adds  to  a  Lord  Chancellor.  So  Pope's 
proverbial  verse, 

"  True  wit  is  Nature  to  advantage  drest," 

unpleasantly  suggests  Nature  under  the  hands  of  a  lady's- 
maid.*  We  have  no  word  in  English  that  will  exactly 
define  this  want  of  propriety  in  diction.  Vulgar  is  too 
strong,  and  commonplace  too  weak.  Perhaps  bourgeois 
comes  as  near  as  any.  It  is  to  be  noticed  that  Dryden 
does  not  unequivocally  condemn  the  passage  he  quotes, 
but  qualifies  it  with  an  "  if  I  am  not  much  mistaken." 
Indeed,  though  his  judgment  in  substantial,  like  that  of 
Johnson,  is  always  worth  having,  jhis  taste,  the  negative 
half  of  genius,  never  altogether  refined  itself  from  a 
colloquial  familiarity,  which  is  one  of  the  charms  of  his 
prose,  and  gives  that  air  of  easy  strength  in  which  his 
satire  is  unmatched.  In  his  "Royal  Martyr  "  (1GG9), 
the  tyrant  Maximin  says  to  the  gods  :  — 

"  Keep  you  your  rain  and  sunshine  in  the  skies, 
And  I'll  keep  back  my  flame  and  sacrifice; 
Your  trade  of  Heaven  shall  soon  be  at  a  stand, 
And  all  your  goods  lie  dead  upon  your  hand,"  — 

a  passage  w^hich  has  as  many  faults  as  only  Dryden  was 
capable  of  committing,  .even  to  a  false  idiom  forced  by 
the  last  rhyme.  The  same  tyrant  in  dying  exclaims  :  — 

"  And  after  thee  I  '11  go, 

Revenging  still,  and  following  e'en  to  th'  other  world  my  blow, 
And,  shoving  back  this  earth  on  tchich  1  sit, 
I  ''ll  mount  and  scatter  all  the  gods  I  hit.'1'1 

*  In  the  Epimetlieus  of  a  poet  usually  as  elegant  as  Gray  himself, 
one's  finer  sense  is  a  little  jarred  by  the 

"  Spectral  gleam  their  snow-white  dresses." 


DRYDEN.  27 

In  the  "Conquest  of  Grenada"  (1670),  we  have  :  — 

"  This  little  loss  in  our  vast  body  shews 

So  small,  that  half  have  never  heard  the  news  ; 
Fame 's  out  of  breath  e'er  she  can  fy  so  far 
To  tell  'em  all  that  you  have  e'er  made  war."  * 

And  in  the  same  play, 

"  That  busy  thing, 

The  sow?,  is  packing  up,  and  just  on  wing 
Like  parting  swallows  when  they  seek  the  spring," 

where  the  last  sweet  verse  curiously  illustrates  that  in 
equality  (poetry  on  a  prose  background)  which  so  often 
puzzles  us  in  Dryden.  Infinitely  worse  is  the  speech  of 
Almanzor  to  his  mother's  ghost :  — 

"  I  '11  rush  into  the  covert  of  the  night 
And  pull  thee  backward  by  the  shroud  to  light, 
Or  else  I  ;11  squeeze  thee  like  a  bladder  there, 
And  make  thee  groan  thyself  away  to  air." 

What  wonder  that  Dryden  should  have  been  substituted 
for  Davenant  as  the  butt  of  the  "  Rehearsal,"  and  that 
the  parody  should  have  had  such  a  run  1  And  yet  it  was 
Dryden  who,  in  speaking  of  Persius,  hit  upon  the  happy 
phrase  of  "  boisterous  metaphors  "  ;  f  it  was  Dryden  who 
said  of  Cowley,  whom  he  elsewhere  calls  "  the  darling 
of  my  youth,"  $  that  he  was  "  sunk  in  reputation  because 
he  could  never  forgive  any  conceit  which  came  in  his 

*  This  probably  suggested  to  Young  the  grandiose  image  in  his 
"  Last  Day  "( B.  ii.):  — 

"  Those  overwhelming  armies  .... 
Whose  rear  lay  wrapt  in  night,  while  breaking  dawn 
Roused  the  broad  front  and  called  the  battle  on." 
This,  to  be  sure,  is  no  plagiarism;  but  it  should  be  carried  to  Dryden's 
credit  that  we  catch  the  poets  of  the  next  half-century  oftener  with 
their  hands  in  his  pockets  than  in  those  of  any  one  else, 
t  Essay  ou  Satire. 
Ibid. 


28  DRYDEN. 

way,  but  swept,  like  a  drag-net,  great  and  small."*  But 
the  passages  I  have  thus  far  cited  as  specimens  of  our 
poet^_£fla£seness  (for  poet  he  surely  was  intus,  though 
not  always  in  cute)  were  written  before  he  was  forty,  and 
he  had  an  odd  notion,  suitable  to  his  healthy  complexion, 
that  poets  on  the  whole  improve  after  that  date.  Man 
at  forty,  he  says,  "  seems  to  be  fully  in  his  summer 
tropic,  .  .  ,  .  and  I  believe  that  it  will  hold  in  all  great 
poets  that,  though  they  wrote  before  with  a  certain  heat 
of  genius  which  inspired  them,  yet  that  heat  was  not 
perfectly  digested."  f  But  artificial  heat  is  never  to  be 
digested  at  all,  as  is  plain  in  Dryden's  case.  He  was  a 
man  who  warmed  slowly,  and,  in  his  hurry  to  supply  the 
l  market,  forced  his  mind.  The  result  was  the  same  after 
forty  as  before.  In  "  (Edipus  "  (1679)  we  find, 

"  Not  one  bolt 

Shall  err  from  Thebes,  but  more  be  called  for,  more, 
New-moulded  thunder  of  a  larger  size  !  " 

This  play  was  written  in  conjunction  with  Lee,  of  whom 

*  Preface  to  Fables.  Men  are  always  inclined  to  revenge  themselves 
on  their  old  idols  in  the  first  enthusiasm  of  conversion  to  a  purer  faith. 
Cowley  had  all  the  faults  that  Dryden  loads  him  with,  and  yet  his 
popularity  was  to  some  extent  deserved.  He  at  least  had  a  theory 
that  poetry  should  soar,  not  creep,  and  longed  for  some  expedient,  in 
the  failure  of  natural  wings,  by  which  he  could  lift  himself  away  from 
the  conventional  and  commonplace.  By  beating  out  the  substance  of 
Pindar  very  thin,  he  contrived  a  kind  of  balloon  which,  tumid  Avith 
gas,  did  certainly  mount  a  little,  into  the  clouds,  if  not  above  them, 
though  sure  to  come  suddenly  down  with  a  bump.  His  odes,  indeed, 
are  an  alternation  of  upward  jerks  and  concussions,  and  smack  more 
of  Chapelain  than  of  the  Theban,  but  his  prose  is  very  agreeable,  — 
Montaigne  and  water,  perhaps,  but  with  some  flavor  of  the  Gascon 
wine  left.  The  strophe  of  his  ode  to  Dr.  Scarborough,  in  which  he 
compares  his  surgical  friend,  operating  for  the  stone,  to  Moses  striking 
the  rock,  more  than  justifies  all  the  ill  that  Dryden  could  lay  'at  his 
door.  It  was  into  precisely  such  mud-holes  that  Cowley's  Will-o'-the- 
Wisp  had  misguided  him.  Men  may  never  wholly  shake  off  a  vice 
but  they  are  always  conscious  of  it,  and  hate  the  tempter. 

t  Dedication  of  Georgics. 


DRYDEN.  29 

Dryden  relates  *  that,  when  some  one  said  to  him,  "  It 
is  easy  enough  to  write  like   a  madman,"   he   replied, 
"  No,  it  is  hard  to  write  like  a  madman,  but  easy  enoughX 
to  write  like  a  fool,"  —  perhaps  the   most   compendious 
lecture  on  poetry  ever  delivered.     The  splendid  bit  of  ' 
eloquence,  which  has  so  much  the  sheet-iron  clang  of 
impeachment  thunder  (I  hope  that  Dryden  is  not  in  the 
Library  of  Congress !)  is  perhaps  Lee's.     The  following 
passage  almost  certainly  is  his  :  — 

"  Sure  't  is  the  end  of  all  things !     Fate  has  torn 
The  lock  of  Time  off,  and  his  head  is  now 
The  ghastly  ball  of  round  Eternity!  " 

But  the  next,  in  which  the  soul  is  likened  to  the  pocket 
of  an  indignant  housemaid  charged  with  theft,  is  wholly 
in  Dryden's  manner  :  — 

"  No ;  I  dare  challenge  heaven  to  turn  me  outward, 
And  shake  my  soul  quite  empty  in  your  sight." 

In  the  same  style,  he  makes  his  Don  Sebastian  (1690) 
say  that  he  is  as  much  astonished  as  "  drowsy  mortals  " 
at  the  last  trump, 

"  When,  called  in  haste,  they  fumble  for  their  limbs," 
and  propose  to  take  upon  himself  the  whole  of  a  crime 
shared  with  another  by  asking  Heaven  to  charge  the  bill 
on  him.  And  in  "  King  Arthur,"  written  ten  years  after 
the  Preface  from  which  I  have  quoted  his  confession 
about  Dubartas,  we  have  a  passage  precisely  of  the  kind 
he  condemned  :  — 

"  Ah  for  the  many  souls  as  but  this  morn 
Were  clothed  with  flesh  and  warmed  with  vital  blood, 
But  naked  now,  or  s/u'rtedbut  with  air." 

Dryden  too  often  violated  his  own  admirable  rule,  that 
"an  author  is  not  to  write  all  he  can,  but  only  all  he 
ought." f  In  his  worst  images,  however,  there  is  often 
vividness  that  half  excuses  them.  But  it  is  a  grotesque 

*  In  a  letter  to  Dennis,  1693.  t  Preface  to  Fables. 


30  DRYDEN. 

vividness,  as  from  the  flare  of  a  bonfire.  They  do  not 
flash  into  sudden  lustre,  as  in  the  great  poets,  where  the 
imaginations  of  poet  and  reader  leap  toward  each  other 
and  meet  half-way. 

AXnEnglish  prose  is  indebted  to  Dryden  for  having  freed 
it  from  the  cloister  of  pedantry.  He,  more  than  any 
other  single  writer,  contributed,  as  well  by  precept  as 

I  example,  to  give  it  sup^Lene^^ljuovement  and  the 
easier  air  of  the  modern  world.  His  own  style,  juicy 
with  proverbial  phrases,  has  that  familiar  dignity,  so  hard 
to  attain,  perhaps  unattainable  except  by  one  who,  like 
Dryden,  feels  that  his  position  is  assured.  Charles  Cot 
ton  is  as  easy,  but  not  so  elegant ;  Walton  as  familiar, 
but  not  so  flowing ;  Swift  as  idiomatic,  but  not  so  ele 
vated  ;  Burke  more  splendid,  but  not  so  equally  lumi 
nous.  That  his  style  was  no  easy  acquisition  (though, 
of  course,  the  aptitude  was  innate)  he  himself  tells  us. 
In  his  dedication  of  "  Troilus  and  Cressida "  (1679), 
where  he  seenas  to  hint  at  the  erection  of  an  Academy, 
he  says  that  "  the  perfect  knowledge  of  a  tongue  was 
never  attained  by  any  single  person.  The  Court,  the 
College,  and  the  Town  must  all  be  joined  in  it.  And  as 
our  English  is  a  composition  of  the  dead  and  living 
tongues,  there  is  required  a  perfect  knowledge,  not  only 
of  the  Greek  and  Latin,  but  of  the  Old  German,  French, 
and  Italian,  and  to  help  all  these,  a  conversation  with 
those  authors  of  our  own  who  have  written  with  the 
fewest  faults  in  prose  and  verse.  But  how  barbarously 
we  yet  write  and  speak  your  Lordship  knows,  and  I  am 
sufficiently  sensible  in  my  own  English.*  For  I  am 
often  put  to  a  stand  in  considering  whether  what  I  write 
be  the  idiom  of  the  tongue,  or  false  grammar  and  non- 

*  More  than  half  a  century  later,  Orrery,  in  his  "  Remarks  "  on 
Swift,  says :  "  We  speak  and  we  write  at  random ;  and  if  a  man's  com 
mon  conversation  were  committed  to  paper,  he  would  be  startled  for 


DRYDEN.  31 

sense  couched  beneath  that  specious  name  of  Anglicism, 
and  have  no  other  way  to  clear  my  doubts  but  by 
translating  my  English  into  Latin,  and  thereby  trying 
what  sense  the  words  will  bear  in  a  more  stable  lan 
guage."  Tantce  molis  erat.  Five  years  later :  "  The 
proprieties  and  delicacies  of  the  English  are  known  to 
few  ;  it  is  impossible  even  for  a  good  wit  to  understand 
and  practise  them  without  the  help  of  a  liberal  educa 
tion,  long  reading  and  digesting  of  those  few  good 
authors  we  have  amongst  us,  the  knowledge  of  men  and 
manners,  the  freedom  of  habitudes  and  conversation  with 
the  best  company  of  both  sexes,  and,  in  short,  without  wear 
ing  off  the  rust  which  he  contracted  while  he  was  laying 
in  a  stock  of  learning."  In  the  passage  I  have  italicized, 
it  will  be  seen  that  Dryden  lays  some  stress  upon  the 
influence  of  women  in  refining  language..  Swift,  also,  in 
his  plan  for  an  Academy,  says  :  "  Now,  though  I  would 
by  no  means  give  the  ladies  the  trouble  of  advising  us  in 
the  reformation  of  our  language,  yet  I  cannot  help  think 
ing  that,  since  they  have  been  left  out  of  all  meetings 
except  parties  at  play,  or  where  worse  designs  are  car 
ried  on,  our  conversation  has  very  much  degenerated."  * 
Swift  affirms  that  the  language  had  grown  corrupt  since 
the  Restoration,  and  that  "  the  Court,  which  used  to  be 
the  standard  of  propriety  and  correctness  of  speech,  was 
then,  and,  I  think,  has  ever  since  continued,  the  worst 
school  in  England."  t  He  lays  the  blame  partly  on  the 


to  find  himself  guilty  in  so  few  sentences  of  so  many  solecisms  and 
such  false  English,"  I  do  not  remember  for  to  anywhere  in  Dry  den's 
prose.  So  few  has  long  been  denizened ;  no  wonder,  since  it  is  nothing 
more  than  si  pen  Anglicized. 

*  Letter  to  the  Lord  High  Treasurer. 

t  Ibid.  He  complains  of  "  manglings  and  abbreviations."  "  What 
docs  your  Lordship  think  of  the  words  dradg'd,  disturb'd,  rebuk'd, 
fladg'J,  and  a  thousand  others?  "  In  a  contribution  to  the  "  Tatler" 
<Xo.  230)  he  ridicules  the  use  of  'urn  for  them,  and  a  number  of  slang 


\ 


32  DRYDEN. 

general  licentiousness,  partly  upon  the  French  education 
of  many  of  Charles's  courtiers,  and  partly  on  the  poets. 
Dryden  undoubtedly  formed  his  diction  by  the  usage  of 
the  Court.  The  age  was  a  very  free-and-easy,  not  to  say 
a  very  coarse  one.  Its  coarseness  was  not  external,  like 
that  of  Elizabeth's  day,  but  the  outward  mark  of  an  in 
ward  depravity.  What  Swift's  notion  of  the  refinement 
of  women  was  may  be  judged  by  his  anecdotes  of  Stella. 
I  will  not  say  that  Dryden's  prose  did  not  gain  by  the 
conversational  elasticity  which  his  frequenting  men  and 
women  of  the  world  enabled  him  to  give  it.  It_Js  the 
best  specimen  of  eveiy-day  style  that  we  have.  But  the 
habitual  dwelling  of  his  mind  in  a  commonplace  atmos 
phere,  and  among  those  easy  levels  of  sentiment  which 
befitted  Will's  Coffee-house  and  the  Bird-cage  Walk,  was 
a  damage  to  his  poetry.  Solitude  is  as  needful  to 
the  imagination  as  society  is  wholesome  for  theTcharacter. 
He  cannot  always  distinguish  between  enthusiasm  and 
extravagance  when  he  sees  them.  But  apart  from 
these  influences  which  I  have  adduced  in  exculpation, 
there  was  certainly  a  vein  of  coarseness  in  him,  a  want 

phrases,  among  which  is  mob.  "  The  war,"  he  says,  "  has  introduced 
abundance  of  polysyllables,  which  will  never  be  able  to  live  many  more 
campaigns."  Speculations,  operations,  preliminaries,  ambassadors,  pal- 
lisadoes,  communication,  circumvallation,  battalions,  are  the  instances  he 
gives,  and  all  are  now  familiar.  No  man,  or  body  of  men,  can  dam  the 
stream  of  language.  Dryden  is  rather  fond  of  'em  for  them,  but  uses  it 
rarely  in  his  prose.  Swift  himself  prefers  't  is  to  it  is,  as  does  Emerson 
still.  In  what  Swift  says  of  the  poets,  he  may  be  fairly  suspected  of 
glancing  at  Dryden,  who  was  his  kinsman,  and  whose  prefaces  and 
translation  of  Virgil  he  ridicules  in  the  "  Tale  ofja  Tub."  Dryden  is 
reported  to  have  said  of  him,  "  Cousin  Swift  is  no  poet."  The  Dean 
began  his  literary  career  by  Pindaric  odes  to  Athenian  Societies  and 
the  like,  —  perhaps  the  greatest  mistake  as  to  his  own  powers  of  which 
an  author  was  ever  guilty.  It  was  very  likely  that  he  would  send  these 
to  his  relative,  already  distinguished,  for  his  opinion  upon  them.  If 
this  was  so,  the  justice  of  Dryden's  judgment  must  have  added  to  the 
smart.  Swift  never  forgot  or  forgave:  Dryden  was  careless  enough 
to  do  the  one,  and  large  enough  to  do  the  other. 


DRYDEN.  33 

of  that  exquisite  sensitiveness  which  is  the  conscience  \ 
of  the  artist.  An  old  gentleman,  writing  to  the  Gentle 
man's  Magazine  in  1745,  professes  to  remember  "plain 
John  Dryden  (before  he  paid  his  court  with  success  to 
the  great)  in  one  uniform  clothing  of  Norwich  drugget. 
I  have  eat  tarts  at  the  Mulberry  Garden  with  him 
and  Madam  Reeve,  when  our  author  advanced  to  a 
sword  and  Chadreux  wig."  '  I  always  fancy  Dryden 
in  the  drugget,  with  wig,  lace  ruffles,  and  sword  super 
imposed.  It  is  the  type  of  this  curiously  incongruous  ( 
man. 

The  first  poem  by  which  Dryden  won  a  general  ac 
knowledgment  of  his  power  was  the  "  Annus  Mirabilis," 
Written  in  his  thirty-seventh  year.  Pepys,  himself  not 
altogether  a  bad  judge,  doubtless  expresses  the  common 
opinion  when  he  says :  "  I  am  very  well  pleased  this 
night  with  reading  a  poem  I  brought  home  with  me 
last  night  from  Westminster  Hall,  of  Dryden's,  upon  the 
present  war ;  a  very  good  poem."  t  And  a  very  good 
poem,  in  some  sort,  it  continues  to  be,  in  spite  of  its 

*  Both  Malone  and  Scott  accept  this  gentleman's  evidence  without 
question,  but  I  confess  suspicion  of  a  memory  that  runs  back  more 
than  eighty-one  years,  and  recollects  a  man  before  he  had  any  claim  to 
remembrance.  Dryden  was  never  poor,  and  there  is  at  Oxford  a  por 
trait  of  him  painted  in  1664,  which  represents  him  in  a  superb  periwig 
and  laced  band.  This  was  "  before  he  had  paid  his  court  with  success 
to  the  great."  But  the  story  is  at  least  ben  trovato,  and  morally  true 
enough  to  serve  as  an  illustration.  Who  the  "  old  gentleman  "  was  has 
never  been  discovered.  Of  CrQwjj&Xwho  has  some  interest  for  us  as  a 
sometime  student  at  Harvafd)  he  says :  "  Many  a  cup  of  metheghn 
have  I  drank  with  little  starch'd  Johnny  Crown;  we  called  him  so, 
from  the  stiff,  unalterable  primness  of  his  long  cravat."  Crowne  re 
flects  no  more  credit  on  his  Alma  Mater  than  Downing.  Both  were 
sneaks,  and  of  such  a  kind  as,  I  think,  can  only  be  produced  by  a  de 
bauched  Puritanism.  Crowne,  as  a  rival  of  Dryden,  is  contemptuously 
alluded  to  by  Gibber  in  his  "  Apology." 

t  Diary,  IIL  390.  Almost  the  only  notices  of  Dryden  that  make 
him  alive  to  me  I  have  found  in  the  delicious  book  of  this  Polonius- 
Montaigne,  the  only  man  who  ever  had  the  courage  to  keep  a  sincere 
journal,  even  under  the  shelter  of  cipher. 

2*  C 


34  DRYDEN. 

amazing  blemishes.  We  must  always  bear  in  mind  that 
Dryden  lived  in  an  age  that  supplied  him  with  no 
ready-made  inspiration,  and  that  big  phrases  and  images 
are  apt  to  be  pressed  into  the  service  when  great  ones  do 
not  volunteer.  With  this  poem  begins  the  long  series 
of  Dryden's  prefaces,  of  which  Swift  made  such  excellent, 
though  malicious,  fun  that  I  cannot  forbear  to  quote  it. 
"  I  do  utterly  disapprove  and  declare  against  that  perni 
cious  custom  of  making  the^re/trmi-^bill  ^f  -fare  til  the 
book.  For  I  have  always  looked  upon  it  as  a  high  point 
of  indiscretion  in  monster-mongers  and  other  retailers  of 
strange  sights  to  hang  out  a  fair  picture  over  the  door, 
drawn  after  the  life,  with  a  most  eloquent  description 

underneath ;  this  has  saved  me  many  a  threepence 

Such  is  exactly  the  fate  a,t  this  time  of  prefaces 

This  expedient  was  admirable  at  first ;  our  great  Dry  den 
has  long  carried  it  as  far  as  it  would  go,  and  with  in 
credible  success.  He  has  often  said  to  me  in  confidence, 
'  that  the  world  would  never  have  suspected  him  yto  be  so 
great  a  poet,  if  he  had  not  assured  them  so  frequently, 
in  his  prefaces,  that  it  was  impossible  they  could  cither 
doubt  or  forget  it.'  Perhaps  it  may  be  so ;  however,  I 
much  fear  his  instructions  have  edified  out  of  their  place, 
and  taught  men  to  grow  wiser  in  certain  points  where  he 
never  intended  they  should."  *  The  monster-mongers  is 
a  terrible  thrust,  when  we  remember  some  of'tHef come 
dies  and  heroic  plays  which  Dryden  ushered  in  this 
fashion.  In  the  dedication  of  the  "  Annus  "  to  the  city 
of  London  is  one  of  those  pithy  sentences  of  which  Dry- 
den  is  ever  afterwards  so  full,  and  which  he  lets  fall  with 
a  carelessness  that  seems  always  to  deepen  the  meaning  : 
"  I  have  heard,  indeed,  of  some  virtuous  persons  who 

*  Tale  of  a  Tub,  Sect.  V.  Pepys  also  speaks  of  buying  the  "  Maid 
en  Queen  "  of  Mr.  Dryden's,  which  he  himself,  in  his  preface,  seenis 
to  brag  of,  and  indeed  is  a  good  play.  —  18th  January,  1G68. 


DRYDEN.  35 

have  ended  unfortunately,  but  never  of  any  virtuous  na 
tion  ;  Providence  is  engaged  too  deeply  when  the  cause 
becomes  so  general."  In  his  "  account "  of  the  poem  in 
a  letter  to  Sir  Robert  Howard  he  says  :  "  I  have  chosen 
to  write  my  poem  in  quatrains  or  stanzas  of  four  in  al 
ternate  rhyme,  because  I  have  ever  judged  them  more 
noble  and  of  greater  dignity,  both  for  the  sound  and 

number,  than  any  other  verse  in  use  amongst  us 

The  learned  languages  have  certainly  a  great  advantage 
of  us  in  not  being  tied  to  the  slavery  of  any  rhyme. 
.  .  .  .  But  in  this  necessity  of  our  rhymes,  I  have 
always  found  the  couplet  verse  most  easy,  though  not  so 
proper  for  this  occasion  ;  for  there  the  work  is  sooner  at 
an  end,  every  two  lines  concluding  the  labor  of  the  poet." 
A  little  further  on  :  "  They  [the  French]  write  in  alex 
andrines,  or  verses  of  six  feet,  such  as  amongst  us  is  the 
old  translation  of  Homer  by  Chapman  :  all  which,  by 
lengthening  their  chain,*  makes  the  sphere  of  their  activ 
ity  the  greater."  I  have  quoted  these  passages  because, 
in  a  small  compass,  they  include  several  things  charac 
teristic  of  Dryden.  "  I  have  ever  judged,"  and  "  I  have 
always  found,"  are  particularly  so.  If  he  took  up  an 
opinion  in  the  morning,  he  would  have  found  so  many 
arguments  for  it  before  night  that  it  would  seem  already 
old  and  familiar.  So  with  his  reproach  of  rhyme  ;  a 

*  He  is  fond  of  this  image.  In  the  "  Maiden  Queen  "  Celadon  tells 
Sabina  that,  when  he  is  with  her  rival  Florimel,  his  heart  is  still  her 
prisoner,  "  it  only  draws  a  longer  chain  after  it."  Goldsmith's  fancy 
was  taken  by  it;  and  everybody  admires  in  the  "  Traveller"  the  ex 
traordinary  conceit  of  a  heart  dragging  a  lengthening  chain.  The 
smoothness  of  too  many  rhymed  pentameters  is  that  of  thin  ice  over 
shallow  water;  so  long  as  we  glide  along  rapidly,  all  is  well;  but  if  we 
dwell  a  moment  on  any  one  spot,  we  may  find  ourselves  knee-deep  in, 
mud.  A  later  poet,  in  trying  to  improve  on  Goldsmith,  shows  the  ludii 
crousness  of  the  image :  — 

"  And  round  my  heart's  leg  ties  its  galling  chain." 
To  write  imaginatively  a  man  should  have  —  imagination ! 


36  DRYDEN. 

year  or  two  before  he  was  eagerly  defending  it ;  *  again 
a  few  years,  and  he  will  utterly  condemn  and  drop  it  in 
his  plays,  while  retaining  it  in  his  translations  ;  after 
wards  his  study  of  Milton  leads  him  to  think  that  blank 
verse  would  suit  the  epic  style  better,  and  he  proposes 
to  try  it  with  Homer,  but  at  last  translates  one  book  as 
a  specimen,  and  behold,  it  is  in  rhyme  !  But  the  charm 
\  of  this  great  advocate  is,  that,  whatever  side  he  was  on, 
\hc  could  always  find  excellent  reasons  for  it,  and  state 
ithem  with  great  force,  and  abundance  of  happy  illustra 
tion.  He  is  an  exception  to  the  proverb,  and  is  none  the 
worse  pleader  that  he  is  always  pleading  his  own  cause. 
The  blunder  about  Chapman  is  of  a  kind  into  which  his 
hasty  temperament  often  betrayed  him.  He  remem 
bered  that  Chapman's  "  Iliad  "  was  in  a  long  measure, 
concluded  without  looking  that  it  was  alexandrine,  and 
then  attributes  it  generally  to  his  "  Homer."  Chap 
man's  "  Iliad  "  is  done  in  fourte en-syllable  verse,  and  his 
"  Odyssee  "  in  the  very  metre  that  Dryden  himself  used 
in  his  own  version.!  I  remark  also  what  he  says  of  the 
couplet,  that  it  was  easy  because  the  second  verse  con 
cludes  the  labor  of  the  poet.  And  yet  it  was  Dryden 
who  found  it  hard  for  that  very  reason.  His  vehement 
\abundance  refused  those  narrow  banks,  first  running 


*  See  his  epistle  dedicatory  to  the  "  Rival  Ladies  "  (1664).  For  the 
other  side,  see  particularly  a  passage  in  his  "  Discourse  on  Epic 
Poetry"  (1697). 

f  In  the  same  way  he  had  two  years  before  assumed  that  Shake 
speare  "  was  the  first  who,  to  shun  the  pains  of  continued  rhyming,  in 
vented  that  kind  of  writing  which  we  call  blank  verse !  "  Dryden  was 
nevei",  I  suspect,  a  very  careful  student  of  English  literature.  He 
seems  never  to  have  known  that  Surrey  translated  a  part  of  the 
"  jEneid  "  (and  with  great  spirit)  into  blank  verse.  Indeed,  be  was  not 
a  scholar,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  but  he  had  that  faculty  of  rapid 
assimilation  without  study,  so  remarkable  in  Coleridge  and  other  rich 
minds,  whose  office  is  rather  to  impregnate  than  to  invent.  Theso 
brokers  of  thought  perform  a  great  office  in.  literature,  second  only  to 
that  of  originators- 


DRYDEN.  37 

over  into  a  triplet,  and,  even  then  uncontainable,  rising 
to  an  alexandrine  in  the  concluding  verse.  And  I  have 
little  doubt  that  it  was  the  roominess,  rather  than  the 
dignity,  of  the  quatrain  which  led  him  to  choose  it.  As 
apposite  to  this,  I  may  quote  what  he  elsewhere  says  of 
octosyllabic  verse  :  "  The  thought  can  turn  itself  with 
greater  ease  in  a  larger  compass.  When  the  rhyme 
comes  too  thick  upon  us,  it  straightens  the  expression  : 
we  are  thinking  of  the  close,  when  we  should  be  em 
ployed  in  adorning  the  thought.  It  makes  a  poet  giddy 
with  turning  in  a  space  too  narrow  for  his  imagination."  * 
Dryclen  himself,  as  was  not  always  the  case  with  him,  I 
was  well  satisfied  with  his  work.  He  calls  it  his  best  hith 
erto,  and  attributes  his  success  to  the  excellence  of  his  sub 
ject,  "  incomparably  the  best  he  had  ever  had,  excepting 
only  the  Royal  Family"  The  first  part  is  devoted  to 
the  Dutch  war  ;  the  last  to  the  fire  of  London.  The  mar 
tial  half  is  infinitely  the  better  of  the  two.  He  altogether 
surpasses  his1  model,  Davenant.  If  his  poem  lack  the 
gravity  of  thought  attained  by  a  few  stanzas  of  "  Gondi- 
bert,"  it  is  vastly  superior  in  life,  in  picturesqueness,  in 
the  energy  of  single  lines,  and,  above  all,  in  imagination. 
Few  men  have  read  "  Gondibert,"  and  almost  every  one 
speaks  of  it,  as  commonly  of  the  dead,  with  a  certain 
subdued  respect.  And  it  deserves  respect  as  an  honest 
effort  to  bring  poetry  back  to  its  highest  office  in  the 
ideal  treatment  of  life.  Davenant  emulated  Spenser, 
and  if  his  poem  had  been  as  good  as  his  preface,  it  could 
still  be  read  in  another  spirit  than  that  of  investigation. 
As  it  is,  it  always  reminds  me  of  Goldsmith's  famous 
verse.  It  is  remote,  unfriendly,  solitary,  and,  above 

*  Essay  on  Satire.  What  he  has  said  just  before  this  about  Butler 
is  worth  noting.  Butler  had  had  a  chief  hand  in  the  "  Rehearsal,"  but 
Dryden  had  no  grudges  where  the  question  was  of  giving  its  just 
praise  to  merit. 


38  DRYDEN. 

^  all,  slow.  Its  shining  passages,  for  there  are  such,  re 
mind  one  of  distress-rockets  sent  up  at  intervals  from 
a  ship  just  about  to  founder,  and  sadden  rather  than 
cheer.* 

The  first  part   of  the  "  Annus  Mirabilis "   is  by  no 

means  clear  of  the  false  taste  of  the  time,t  though  it 

i  has  some  of  Dryden's  manliest  verses  and  happiest  com- 

1  parisons,   always  his  two  distinguishing  merits.     Here, 

as  almost   everywhere   else  in  Dryden,  measuring  him 

merely  as  poet,  we  recall  what  he,  with  pathetic  pride, 

says  of  himself  in  the  prologue  to  "  Aurengzebe  "  :  — 

"Let  him  retire,  betwixt  two  ages  cast, 
The  first  of  this,  the  hindmost  of  the  last." 

What  can  be  worse  than  what  he  says  of  comets  1  — 

"  Whether  they  unctuous  exhalations  are 
Fired  by  the  sun,  or  seeming  so  alone, 
Or  each  some  more  remote  and  slippery  star 
Which  loses  footing  when  to  mortals  shown." 

Or  than  this,   of  the  destruction  of  the  Dutch   India- 
ships  1  — 

"  Amidst  whole  heaps  of  spices  lights  a  ball, 

And  now  their  odors  armed  against  them  fly  ; 

Some  preciously  by  shattered  porcelain  fall, 

And  some  by  aromatic  splinters  die." 

Dear  Dr.  Johnson  had  his  doubts  about  Shakespeare,  but 

*  The  conclusion  of  the  second  canto  of  Book  Third  is  the  best  con 
tinuously  fine  passage.  Dryden's  poem  has  nowhere  so  much  mean 
ing  in  so  small  space  as  Davenant,  when  he  says  of  the  sense  of  honor 
that, 

"  Like  Power,  it  grows  to  nothing,  growing  less." 

Davenant  took  the  hint  of  the  stanza  from  Sir  John  Davies.     Wyatt 
first  used  it,  so  far  as  I  know,  in  English. 

t  Perhaps  there  is  no  better  lecture  on  the  prevailing  vices  of  style 
and  thought  (if  thought  this  frothy  ferment  of  the  mind  may  be  called) 
than  in  Cotton  Mather's  '•  Magnalia."  For  Mather,  like  a  true  pro 
vincial,  appropriates  only  the  mannerism,  and,  as  is  usual  in  such 
cases,  betrays  all  its  weakness  by  the  unconscious  parody  of  exaggera 
tion. 


DRYDEN.  39 

here  at  least  was  poetry  !  This  is  one  of  the  quatrains 
which  he  pronounces  "  worthy  of  our  author."* 

But  Dry  den  himself  has  said  that  "  a  man  who  is  re 
solved  to  praise  an  author  with  any  appearance  of  jus 
tice  must  be  sure  to  take  him  on  the  strongest  side,  and 
where  he  is  least  liable  to  exceptions."  This  is  true 
also  of  one  wrho  wishes  to  measure  an  author  fairly,  for 
the  higher  wisdom  of  criticism  lies  in  the  capacity  to 

admire.  ) 

Leser,  wie  gefall  ich  dir? 
Leser,  wie  gefiillst  du  mir? 

are  both  fair  questions,  the  answer  to  the  first  being 
more  often  involved  in  that  to  the  second  than  is  some 
times  thought.  The  poet  in  Dryden  was  never  more 
fully  revealed  than  in  such  verses  as  these  :  — 

"  And  threatening  France,  placed  like  a  painted  Jove,f 
Kept  idle  thunder  in  his  lifted  hand  "  ; 

"  Silent  in  smoke  of  cannon  they  come  on  " ; 

"  And  his  loud  guns  speak  thick,  like  angry  men  " ; 

*  The  Doctor  was  a  capital  judge  of  the  substantial  value  of  the 
goods  he  handled,  but  his  judgment  always  seems  that  of  the  thumb  and 
forefinger.  For  the  shades,  the  disposition  of  colors,  the  beauty  of  the 
figure?,  he  has  as  good  as  no  sense  whatever.  The  critical  parts  of  his 
Life  of  Dryden  seem  to  me  the  best  of  his  writing  in  this  kind.  There 
is  little  to  be  gleaned  after ^him.  He  had  studied  his  author,  which  he 
seldom  did,  and  his  criticism  is  sympathetic,  a  thing  still  rarer  with 
him.  As  illustrative  of  his  own  habits,  his  remarks  on  Dryden's  read 
ing  are  curious. 

t  Perhaps  the  hint  was  given  by  a  phrase  of  Corneille,  monarque  en 
peinture.  Dryden  seldom  borrows,  unless  from  Shakespeare,  without 
improving,  and  he  borrowed  a  great  deal.  Thus  in  "  Don  Sebastian  " 
(of  suicide):  — 

"  Brutus  and  Cato  might  discharge  their  souls, 
And  give  them  furloughs  for  the  other  world ; 
But  Ave,  like  sentries,  are  obliged  to  stand 
In  starless  nights  and  wait  the  appointed  hour." 

The  thought  is  Cicero's,'  but  how  it  is  intensified  by  the  "  starless 
nights"  !  Dryden,  I  suspect,  got  it  from  his  favorite,  Montaigne,  who 
Bays,  "  Qxie  nous  ne  pouvons  abandonner  cette  garnison  du  monde,  sans 


40  DKYDEN. 

"  The  vigorous  seaman  every  port-hole  plies, 
And  adds  his  heart  to  every  gun  he  fires  " ; 

"And,  though  to  me  unknown,  they  sure  fought  well, 
Whom  Kupert  led,  and  who  were  British  born." 

This  is  masculine  writing,  and  yet  it  must  be  said  that 
there  is  scarcely  a  quatrain  in  which  the  rhyme  does  not 
trip  him  into  a  platitude,  and  there  are  too  many  swag 
gering  with  that  expression  forte  (Pun  sentiment  faible 
which  Yoltaire  condemns  in  Corneille,  —  a  temptation 
to  which  Dryden  always  lay  too  invitingly  open.  But 
there  are  passages  higher  in  kind  than  any  I  have  cited, 
because  they  show  imagination.  Such  are  the  verses  in 
which  he  describes  the  dreams  of  the  disheartened 
enemy :  - — 

"  In  dreams  they  fearful  precipices  tread, 
Or,  shipwrecked,  labor  to  some  distant  shore, 
Or  in  dark  churches  walk  among  the  dead  "  ; 

and  those  in  which  he  recalls  glorious  memories,  and 
sees  where 

"  The  mighty  ghosts  of  our  great  Harries  rose, 
And  armed  Edwards  looked  with  anxious  eyes." 

A  few  verses,  like  the  pleasantly  alliterative  one  in 
which  he  makes  the  spider,  "  from  the  silent  ambush  of 
his  den,"  "  feel  far  off  the  trembling  of  his  thread,"  show 
that  he  was  beginning  to  study  the  niceties  of  verse,  in 
stead  of  trusting  wholly  to  what  he  would  have  called 
his  natural  fougue.  On  the  whole,  this  part  of  the  poem 
is  very  good  war  poetry,  as  war  poetry  goes  (for  there  is 
but  one  first-rate  poem  of  the  kind  in  English,  —  short, 
national,  eager  as  if  the  writer  were  personally  engaged, 
with  the  rapid  metre  of  a  drum  beating  the  charge,  — 

le  commandement  exprez  de  celuy  qui  nous  y  a  mis."  (L.  ii.  chap.  3.) 
In  the  same  play,  by  a  very  Drydenish  verse,  he  gives  new  force  to  an 
«ld  comparison :  — 

"  And  I  should  break  through  laws  divine  and  human, 
And  think  'em  cobwebs  spread  for  little  marf, 
Which  all  the  bulky  herd  of  Nature  breaks." 


DRYDEN.  41 

and  that  is  Drayton's  "  Battle  of  Agincourt "  *),  but  it 
shows  more  study  of  Lucan  than  of  Virgil,  and  for  a 
long  time  yet  we  shall  find  Dry  den  bewildered  by  bad 
models.  He  is  always  imitating  —  no,  that  is  not  the 
word,  ahyjiys  emulating  —  somebody  in  his  more  strictly 
poetical  attempts,  for  in  that  direction  he  always  needed 
some  external  impulse  to  set  his  mind  in  motion.  This 
is  more  or  less  true  of  all  authors  ;  nor  does  it  detract 
from  their  originality,  which  depends  wholly  on  their . 
being  able  so  far  to  forget  themselves  as  to  let  something  ' 
of  themselves  slip  Into  what,  they  write,  f  Of  absolute 
^ofiginality  we  will  not  speak  till  authors  are  raised  by 
some  Deucalioii-and-Pyrrha  process  ;  and  even  then  our 
faith  would  be  small,  fijjrwriters  who  have  nojpast  are^ 
pretty  sure  of  having  no  future.  Dryden,  at  any  rate, 
always  had  to  have-  his  copy  set  him  at  the  top  of  the 
page,  and  wrote  ill  or  well  accordingly.  J;  His  mind 
(somewhat  solid  for  a  poet)  warmed  slowly,  but,  once 
fairly  heated  through,  he  had  more  of  that  good-luck  of 
self-oblivion  than  most  men.  ;  He  certainly  gave  even  a 
liberal  interpretation  to  Moliere's  rule  of  taking  his  own 
property  wherever  he  found  it,  though  he  sometimes 
blundered  awkwardly  about,  what  was  properly  his  ;  but 
in  literature,  it  should  be  remembered,  a  thing  al\vays 
becomes  his  at  last  who  says  it  best,  and  thus  makes  it 
his  own.]: 

*  Not  his  solemn  historical  droning  under  that  title,  but  addressed 
"  To  the  Cambrio-Britons  on  their  harp." 

t  "  Les  poe'tes  euxmemes  s'animent  et  s'e'chauffent  par  la  lecture 
des  autres  poe'tes.    Messieurs  de  Malherbe,  vCorneille,  &c.,  se  dispo- 
soient  au  travail  par  la  lecture  des  poe'tes  qui  e"toient  de  leur  gout."  — 
Vigncul,  Marvilliana,  I.  64,  65. 
,    \  For  example,  Waller  had  said, 

"  Others  may  use  the  ocean  as  their  road, 
Only  the  English  make  it  their  abode ; 

WTe  Iread  on  billows  with  a  steady  foot"  — 


42  DRYDEN. 

Mr.  Savage  Landor  once  told  me  that  lie  said  to 
Wordsworth  :  "  Mr.  Wordsworth,  a  man  may  mix  poetry 
with  prose  as  much  as  he  pleases,  and  it  will  only  elevate 
and  enliven;  but  the  moment  he  mixes  a  particle  of 
prose  with  his  poetry,  it  precipitates  the  whole."  Words-  • 
worth,  he  added,  never  forgave  him.  The  always  hasty 
Dryden,  as  I  think  I  have  already  said,  was  liable,  like 
a  careless  apothecary's  'prentice,  to  make  the  same  con 
fusion  of  ingredients,  especially  in  the  more  mischievous 
way.  I  cannot  leave  the  "  Annus  Mirabilis  "  without 
giving  an  example  of  this.  Describing  the  Dutch  prizes, 
rather  like  an  auctioneer  than  a  poet,  he  says  that 

"  Some  English  wool,  vexed  in  a  Belgian  loom, 
And  into  cloth  of  spongy  softness  made, 
Did  into  France  or  colder  Denmark  doom, 
To  ruin  with  worse  ware  our  staple  trade." 

One  might  fancy  this  written  by  the  secretary  of  a  board 
of  trade  in  an  unguarded  moment ;  but  we  should  re 
member  that  the  poem  is  dedicated  to  the  city  of  Lon 
don.  The  depreciation  of  the  rival  fabrics  is  exquisite  j 
and  Dryden,  the  most  English  of  our  poets,  would  not 
be  so  thoroughly  English  if  he  had  not  in  him  some 
fibre  of  la  nation  boutiquiere.  Let  us  now  see  how  he 
succeeds  in  attempting  to  infuse  science  (the  most  obsti- 

long  before  Campbell.  Campbell  helps  himself  to  both  thoughts,  en 
livens  them  into 

"  Her  march  is  o'er  the  mountain  wave, 

Her  home  is  on  the  deep," 

and  they  are  his  forevermore.  His  "leviathans  afloat"  be  lifted  from 
the  "  Annus  Mirabilis  " ;  but  in  what  court  could  Dryden  sue?  Again, 
Waller  in  another  poem  calls  the  Duke  of  York's  flag 

"  His  dreadful  streamer,  like  a  comet's  hair  " ; 

and  this,  I  believe,  is  the  first  application  of  the  celestial  portent  to 
this  particular  comparison.  Yet  Milton's  "  imperial  ensign  "  waves 
defiant  behind  his  impregnable  lines,  and  even  Campbell  flaunts  his 
"  meteor  flag  "  in  Waller's  face.  Gray's  bard  might  be  sent  to  the 
lock-up,  but  even  he  would  find  bail. 

"  C'est  imiter  quelqu'un  que  de  planter  des  choux." 


DRYDEN.  43 

nately  prosy  material)  with  poetry.  Speaking  of  "a 
more  exact  knowledge  of  the  longitudes,"  as  he  explains 
in  a  note,  he  tells  us  that, 

"  Then  we  upon  our  globe's  last  verge  shall  go, 
And  view  the  ocean  leaning  on  the  sky; 
From  thence  our  rolling  neighbors  we  shall  know, 
.     And  on  the  lunar  world  securely  pry." 

Dr.  Johnson  confesses  that  he  does  not  understand 
this.  Why  should  he,  when  it  is  plain  that  Dryden  was 
wholly  in  the  dark  himself]  To  understand  it  is  none 
of  my  business,  but  I  confess  that  it  interests  me  as  an 
Americanism.  We  have  hitherto  been  credited  as  the 
inventors  of  the  "jumping-off  place"  at  the  extreme 
western  verge  of  the  world.  But  Dryden  was  before 
hand  with  us.  Though  he  doubtless  knew  that  the 
earth  was  a  sphere  (and  perhaps  that  it  was  flattened  at 
the  poles),  it  was  always  a  flat  surface  in  his  fancy.  In 
his  "  Amphitryon,"  he  makes  Alcmena  say :  — 

"  No,  I  would  fly  thee  to  the  ridge  of  earth, 
And  leap  the  precipice  to  'scape  thy  sight." 

And  in  his  "  Spanish  Friar,"  Lorenzo  says  to  Elvira  that 
they  "  will  travel  together  to  the  ridge  of  the  world,  and 
then  drop  together  into  the  next."  It  is  idle  for  us  poor 
Yankees  to  hope  that  we  can  invent  anything*  To  say 
sooth,  if  Dryden  had  left  nothing  behind  him  but  the 
"  Annus  Mirabilis,"  he  might  have  served  as  a  type  of 
the  kind  of  poet  America  would  have  produced  by  the  big- 
gest-river-and-tallest-mountain  recipe,  —  longitude  and 
latitude  in  plenty,  with  marks  of  culture  scattered  here 
and  there  like  the  carets  on  a  proof-sheet.  } 

It  is  now  time  to  say  something  of  Dryden  as  a 
dramatist.  In  the  thirty-two  years  between  1662  and 
1694  he  produced  twenty-five  plays})  and  assisted  Lee  in 
two.  I  have  hinted  that  it  took  6ryden  longer  than 
most  men  to  find  the  true  bent  of  his  genius.  On  a 


44  DKYDEN. 

superficial  view,  lie  might  almost  seem  to  confirm  that 
theory,  maintained  by  Johnson,  among  others,  that 
genius  was  nothing  more  than  great  intellectual^jpower 
exercised  persistently  in  some  particular-direction  which 
chance  decided,  so  that  it  lay  in  circumstance7  merely 
whether  a  man  should  turnout  a  Shakespeare  or  a  Newton. 
But  when  we  come  to  compare  what  he  wrote,  regardless 
of  Minerva's  averted  face,  with  the  spontaneous  produc 
tion  of  his  happier  muse,  we  shall  be  inclined  to  think 
his  example  one  of  the  strongest  cases  against  the  theory 
in  question.  He  began  liis  dramatic  career,  as  usual,  by 
rowing  against  the  strong  current  of  his  nature,  and 
pulled  only  the  more  doggedly  the  more  he  felt  himself 
"swept  down  the  stream.  His  first  attempt  was  at  com 
edy,  and,  though  his  earliest  piece  of  that  kind  (the 
"Wild  Gallant,"  1GG3)  utterly  failed,  he  wrote  eight 
others  afterwards.  On  the  23d  February,  1663,  Pepys 
writes  in  his  diary  :  "To  Court,  and  there  saw  the 
'  Wild  Gallant '  performed  by  the  king's  house ;  but  it 
was  ill  acted,  and  the  play  so  poor  a  thing  as  I  never 
saw  in  my  life  almost,  and  so  little  answering  the  name, 
that,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  I  could  not,  nor 
can  at  this  time,  tell  certainly  which  was  the  Wild 
Gallant.  The  king  did  not  seem  pleased  at  all  the 
whole  play,  nor  anybody  else."  After  some  alteration, 
it  was  revived  with  more  success.  On  its  publication  in 
1669  Dryden  honestly  admitted  its  former  failure, 
though  with  a  kind  of  salvo  for  his  self-love.  "  I  made 
the  town  my  judges,  and  the  greater  part  condemned  it. 
After  which  I  do  not  think  it  my  concernment  to  defend 
it  with  the  ordinary  zeal  of  a  poet  for  his  decried  poem, 
though  Corneille  is  more  resolute  in  his  preface  before 
*  Pertharite,'  *  which  was  condemned  more  universally 

*  Covneille's  tragedy  of  "  Pertharite  "  was  acted  unsuccessfully  in 
1659.   Racine  made  free  use  of  it  in  his  more  fortunate  "  Andromaque." 


DRYDEN.  45 

than  this Yet  it  was  received  at  Court,  and  was 

more  than  once  the  divertisement  of  his  Majesty,  by  his 
own  command."  Pepys  lets  us  amusingly  behind  the 
scenes  in  the  matter  of  his  Majesty's  divertisement. 
Dryden  does  not  seem  to  see  that  in  the  condemnation 
of  something  meant  to  amuse  the  public  there  can  be  no 
question  of  degree.  To  fail  at  all  is  to  fail  utterly. 

"  Tons  Us  genres  sontpermis,  hors  le  genre  ennuyeux" 

In  the  reading,  at  least,  all  Dryden's  comic  writing  for 
the  stage  must  be  ranked  with  the  latter  class.     He 
himself  would  fain  make  an  exception  of  the  "  Spanish 
Friar,"  but  I  confess  that  I  rather  wonder  at  than  envy 
those  who   can  be  amused  by  it.     His    comedies   lackv 
everything   that    a    comedy    should   have,  —  lightness,  \ 
quickness  of  transition,  unexpectedness  of  incident,  easy  \ 
cleverness  of  dialogue,  and  humorous  contrast  of  charac-  I 
ter  brought  out  by  identity  of   situation.)  The   comic' 
parts  of  the  "  Maiden  Queen  "  seem  to  me  Dryden's  best, 
but  the  merit  even  of  these  is  Shakespeare's,  and  there 
is  little  choice  where   even  the  best  is   only  tolerable. 
The  common  quality,  however,  of  all  Dryden's  comedies  v 
is  their  nastiness,  the  more  remarkable  because  we  have  I 
ample  evidence  that  he  was  a  man  of  modest  conversa 
tion.  )  Pepys,  who  was  by  no  means  squeamish  (for  he 
found  "Sir  Martin  Marall "  "the  most  entire  piece  of  j 
mirth  ....  that  certainly  ever  was  writ  ....  very  ' 
good  wit  therein,  not  fooling"),  writes  in  his  diary  of  the 
19th  June,  1668  :  "  My  wife  and  Deb  to  the  king's  play 
house  to-day,  thinking  to  spy  me  there,  and  saw  the  new  i 
play  '  Evening  Love,'   of  Dryden's,  which,  though  the    ] 
world  commends,  she  likes  not."     The  next  day  he  saw 
it  himself,  "  and  do  not  like  it,  it  being  very  smutty, 
and  nothing  so  good  as  the  '  Maiden  Queen '  or  the  /  In 
dian  Emperor '  ,?f  Dryden's  making.     /  was  troubled  at 


46  DRYDEN. 

it."  On  the  22d  he  adds  :  "  Calling  this  day  at  Her- 
ringman's,*  he  tells  me  Dryden  do  himself  call  it  but  a 
fifth-rate  play."  This  was  no  doubt  true,  and  yet, 
though  Dry  den  in  his  preface  to  the  play  says,  "  I  con 
fess  I  have  given  [yielded]  too  much  to  the  people  in  it, 
and  am  ashamed  for  them  as  well  as  for  myself,  that  I 
have  pleased  them  at  so  cheap  a  rate,"  he  takes  care  to 
add,  "not  that  there  is  anything  here  that  I  would  not 

(defend  to  an  ill-natured  judge."  The  plot  was  from  Cal- 
deron,  and  the  author,  rebutting  the  charge  of  plagiarism, 
tells  us  that  the  king  ("without  whose  command  they 
should  no  longer  be  troubled  with  anything  of  mine  ")  had 
already  answered  for  him  by  saying,  u  that  he  only  de 
sired  that  they  who  accused  me  of  theft  would  always 
steal  him  plays  like  mine."  Of  the  morals  of  the  play  he 
has  not  a  word,  nor  do  I  believe  that  he  was  conscious  of 
any  harm  in  them  till  he  was  attacked  by  Collier,  and  then 
(with  some  protest  against  what  he  considers  the  undue 
severity  of  his  censor)  he  had  the  manliness  to  confess 

|  that  he  had  done  wrong.  "  It  becomes  me  not  to  draw 
my  pen  in  the  defence  of  a  bad  cause,  when  I  have  so 
n  drawn  it  for  a  good  one."  f  And  in  a  letter  to  his 

•^correspondent,  Mrs.  Thomas,  written  only  a  few  weeks 
before  his  death,  warning  her  against  the  example  of 
Mrs.  Behn,  he  says,  with  remorseful  sincerity:  "  I  confess 
I  am  the  last  man  in  the  world  who  ought  in  justice  to 
arraign  her,  who  have  been  myself  too  much  a  libertine 
in  most  of  my  poems,  which  I  should  be  well  contented  I 
had  time  either  to  purge  or  to  see  them  fairly  burned." 
Congreve  was  less  patient,  and  even  Dryden,  in  the  last 
epilogue  he  ever  wrote,  attempts  an  excuse  :  — 

"  Perhaps  the  Parson  stretched  a  point  too  far, 
When  with  our  Theatres  he  waged  a  war; 
He  tells  you  that  this  very  moral  age 
Received  the  first  infection  from  the  Stage, 

"-  *  Dryden's  publisher.  t  Preface  to  the  Fables. 


DRYDEN.  47 

But  sure  a  banished  Court,  with  lewdness  fraught, 
The  seeds  of  open  vice  returning  brought. 

Whitehall  the  naked  Venus  first  revealed, 
Who,  standing,'  as  at  Cyprus,  in  her  shrine, 
The  strumpet  was  adored  with  rites  divine. 

The  poets,  who  must  live  by  courts  or  starve,    ' 
Were  proud  so  good  a  Government  to  serve, 
And,  mixing  with  buffoons  and  pimps  profane, 
Tainted  the  Stage  for  some  small  snip  of  gain." 

Dryden  least  of  all  men  should  have  stooped  to  this 
palliation,  for  he  had,  not  without  justice,  said  of  him 
self  :  "  The  same  parts  and  application  which  have  made 
me  a  poet  might  have  raised  me  to  any  honors  of  the 
gown."  Milton  and  Marvell  neither  lived  by  the  Court, 
nor  starved.  Charles  Lamb  most  ingeniously  defends  the 
Comedy  of  the  Restoration  as  "  the  sanctuary  and  quiet 
Alsatia  of  hunted  casuistry,"  where  there  was  no  pre 
tence  of  representing  a  real  world.*  But  this  was  cer 
tainly  not  so.  Dryden  again  and  again  boasts  of  the  su 
perior  advantage  which  his  age  had  over  that  of  the  elder 
dramatists,  in  painting  polite  life,  and  attributes  it  to  a 
greater  freedom  of  intercourse  between  the  poets  and  the 
frequenters  of  the  Court,  f  We  shall  be  less  surprised 
at  the  kind  of  refinement  upon  which  Dryden  congratu 
lated  himself,  when  we  learn  (from  the  dedication  of 
"  Marriage  a  la  Mode  ")  that  the  Earl  of  Rochester  was 
its  exemplar  :  "  The  best  comic  writers  of  our  age  will 
join  with  me  to  acknowledge  that  they  have  copied  the 
gallantries  of  courts,  the  delicacy  of  expression,  and  the 
decencies  of  behavior  from  your  Lordship."  In  judging 

*  I  interpret  some  otherwise  ambiguous  passages  in  this  charming 
and  acute  essay  by  its  title:  "On  the  artificial  comedy  of  the  last 
century." 

t  See  especially  his  defence  of  the  epilogue  to  the  Second  Part  of 
the  "  Conquest  of  Granada  "  (1672). 


48  DRYDEN. 

Diyden,  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  for  some  years 
he  was  under  contract  to  deliver  three  plays  a  year,  a 
kind  of  bond  to  which  no  man  should  subject  his  brain 
who  has  a  decent  respect  for  the  quality  of  its  products. 
We  should  remember,  too,  that  in  his  day  manners  meant 
what  we  call  morals,  that  custom  always  makes  a  larger 
part  of  virtue  among  average  men  than  they  are  quite 
aware,  and  that  the  reaction  from  an  outward  conform 
ity  -which  had  no  root  in  inward  faith  may  for  a  time  have 
given  to  the  frank  expression  of  laxity  an  air  of  honesty 
that  made  it  seem  almost  refreshing.  There  is  no  such 
hotbed  for  excess  of  license  as  excess  of  restraint,  and 
the  arrogant  fanaticism  of  a  single  virtue  is  apt  to  make 
men  suspicious  of  tyranny  in  all  the  rest.  But  the  riot 
of  emancipation  could  not  last  long,  for  the  more  toler 
ant  society  is  of  private  vice,  the  more  exacting  will  it 
be  of  public  decorum,  that  excellent  thing,  so  often  the 
plausible  substitute  for  things  more  excellent.  By  1678 
the  public  mind  had  so  far  recovered  its  tone  that  Dry- 
den's  comedy  of  "  Limberham  "  was  barely  tolerated  for 
three  nights.  I  will  let  the  man  who  looked  at  human 
nature  from  more  sides,  and  therefore  judged  it  more 
gently  than  any  other,  give  the'  only  excuse  possible  for 
Dryden  :  — 

"  Men's  judgments  are 

A  parcel  of  their  fortunes,  and  things  outward 

Do  draw  the  inward  quality  after  them 

To  suffer  all  alike." 

Dryden's  own  apology  only  makes  matters  worse  for 
him  by  showing  that  he  committed  his  offences  with  his 
eyes  wide  open,  and  that  he  wrote  comedies  so  wholly 
in  despite  of  nature  as  never  to  deviate  into  the  comic. 
Failing  as  clown,  he  did  not  scruple  to  take  on  himself 
the  office  of  Chiffinch  to  the  palled  appetite  of  the  pub 
lic.  "  For  I  confess  my  chief  endeavours  are  to  delight 


DRYDEN.  49 

the  age  in  which  I  live.  If  the  humour  of  this  be  for 
low  comedy,  small  accidents,  and  raillery,  I  will  force 
my  genius  to  obey  it,  though  with  more  reputation  I 
could  write  in  verse.  I  know  I  am  not  so  fitted  by  na 
ture  to  write  comedy ;  I  want  that  gayety  of  humour 
which  is  requisite  to  it.  My  conversation  is  slow  and 
dull,  my  humour  saturnine  and  reserved  :  In  short,  I  am 
none  of  those  who  endeavour  to  break  jests  in  company 
or  make  repartees.  So  that  those  who  decry  my  come 
dies  do  me  no  injury,  except  it  be  in  point  of  profit : 
Reputation  in  them  is  the  last  thing  to  which  I  shall  pre 
tend."*  For  my  own  part,  though  I  have  been  forced 
to  hold  my  nose  in  picking  my  way  through  'these  or 
dures  of  Dryden,  I  am  free  to  say  that  I  think  them  far 
less  morally  mischievous  than  that  corps-de-ballet  lit 
erature  in  which  the  most  animal  of  the  passions  is  made 
more  temptingly  naked  by  a  veil  of  French  gauze.  Nor 
does  Dryden's  lewdness  leave  such  a  reek  in  the  mind  I 
as  the  filthy  cynicism  of  Swift,  who  delighted  to  uncover  ( 
the  nakedness  of  our  common  mother. 

It  is  pleasant  to  follow  Dryden  into  the  more  conge- 
jnial  region  of  heroic  plays,  though  here  also  we  find  him 
making  a  false  start.  Anxious  to  please  the  king,|  and 
so  able  a  reasoner  as  to  convince  even  himself  of  the 
justice  of  whatever  cause  he  argued,  he  not  only  wrote 
tragedies  in  the  French  style,  but  defended  his  practice 
in  an  essay  which  is  by  far  the  most  delightful  repro 
duction  of  the  classic  dialogue  ever  written  in  English. 
Eugenius  (Lord  Buckhurst),  Lisideius  (Sir  Charles  Sid- 
ley),  Crites  (Sir  R.  Howard),  and  Neander  (Dryden)  are 
the  four  partakers  in  the  debate.  The  comparative 

*  Defence  of  an  Essay  on  Dramatick  Poesy. 

t  "  The  favor  which  heroick  plays  have  lately  found  upon  our 
theatres  has  been  wholly  derived  to  them  from  the  countenance  and 
approbation  they  have  received  at  Court."  (Dedication  of  "Indian 
Emperor  "  to  Duchess  of  Monmouth.) 

3  D 


50  DRYDEN. 

merits  of  ancients  and  moderns,  of  the  Shakespearian  and 
contemporary  drama,  of  rhyme  and  blank  verse,  the  value 
of  the  three  (supposed)  Aristotelian  unities,  are  the  main 
topics  discussed.  The  tone  of  the  discussion  is  admira 
ble,  midway  between  bookishness  and  talk,  and  the  fair 
ness  with  which  each  side  of  the  argument  is  treated 
shows  the  breadth  of  Dryden's  mind  perhaps  better  than 
any  other  one  piece  of  his  writing.  There  are  no  men  of 
straw  set  up  to  be  knocked  down  again,  as  there  com 
monly  are  in  debates  conducted  upon  this  plan.  The 
"  Defence  "  of  the  Essay  is  to  be  taken  as  a  supplement 
to  Neander's  share  in  it,  as  well  as  many  scattered  pas 
sages  in  subsequent  prefaces  and  dedications.  All  the  in 
terlocutors  agree  that  "the  sweetness  of  English  verse  was 
never  understood  or  practised  by  our  fathers,"  and  that 
"  our  poesy  is  much  improved  by  the  happiness  of  some 
writers  yet  living,  who  first  taught  us  to  mould  our 
thoughts  into  easy  and  significant  words,  to  retrench  the 
superfluities  of  expression,  and  to  make  our  rhyme  so 
properly  a  part  of  the  verse  that  it  should  never  mis 
lead  the  sense,  but  itself  be  led  and  governed  by  it."  In 
another  place  he  shows  that  by  "living  writers"  he  meant 
Waller  and  Denham.  "  llhyme  has  all  the  advantages  of 
prose  besides  its  own.  But  the  excellence  and  dignity 
of  it  were  never  fully  known  till  Mr.  Waller  taught  it  : 
he  first  made  writing  easily  an  art ;  first  showed  us  to 
conclude  the  sense,  most  commonly  in  distiches,  which  in 
the  verse  before  him  runs  on  for  so  many  lines  together 
that  the  reader  is  out  of  breath  to  overtake  it."*,  Dry- 
den  afterwards  changed  his  mind,  and  one  of  the  excel 
lences  of  his  own  rhymed  verse  is,  that  his  sense  is  too 
ample  to  be  concluded  by  the  distich.^)  Rhyme  had  been 
censured  as  unnatural  in  dialogue  ;  but  Dry  den  replies 
that  it  is  no  more  so  than  blank  verse,  since  no  man 

*  Dedication  of  "  Rival  Ladies." 


DRYDEN.  51 

talks  any  kind  of  verse  in  real  life.  But  the  argument 
for  rhyme  is  of  another  kind.  "  I  am  satisfied  if  it 
cause  delight,  for  delight  is  the  chief  if  not  the  only  end 
of  poesy  [he  should  have  said  means] ;  instruction  can 
be  admitted  but  in  the  second  place,  for  poesy  only  in 
structs  as  it  delights The  converse,  therefore, 

which  a  poet  is  to  imitate  must  be  heightened  with  all 
the  arts  and  ornaments  of  poesy,  and  must  be  such 
as,  strictly  considered,  could  never  be  supposed  spoken- 

by  any  without  premeditation Thus  prose,  though 

the  rightful  prince,  yet  is  by  common  consent  deposed 
as  too  weak  for  the  government  of  serious  plays,  and, 
he  failing,  there  now  start  up  two  competitors;  one 
the  nearer  in  blood,  which  is  blank  verse  ;  the  other 
more  fit  for  the  ends  of  government,  which  is  rhyme. 
Blank  verse  is,  indeed,  the  nearer  prose,  but  he  is  blem 
ished  with  the  weakness  of  his  predecessor.  Rhyme  (for 
I  will  deal  clearly)  has  somewhat  of  the  usurper  in  him  ; 
but  he  is  brave  and  generous,  and  his  dominion  pleas 
ing."  *  To  the  objection  that  the  difficulties  of  rhyme 
will  lead  to  circumlocution,  he  answers  in  substance,  that 
a  good  poet  will  know  how  to  avoid  them. 

It  is  curious  how  long  the  superstition  that  Waller 
was  the  refiner  of  English  verse  has  prevailed  since  Dry- 
den  first  gave  it  vogue.  He  was  a  very  poor  poet  and 
a  purely  mechanical  versifier.  He  has  lived  mainly  on 
the  credit  of  a  single  couplet, 

"  The  soul's  dark  cottage,  battered  and  decayed. 
Lets  in  new  light  through  chinks  that  Time  hath  made," 

in  which  the  melody  alone  belongs  to  him,  and  the  con- 


*  Defence  of  the  Essay.    Dryden,  in  the  happiness  of  his  illustrative 
comparisons,  is  almost  unmatched.    Like  himself,  they  occupy  a  mid-  \ 
die  ground  between  poetry  and  prose,  —  they  are  a  cross  between 
metaphor  and  simile. 


52  DKYDEN. 

ceit,  such,  as  it  is,  to  Samuel  Daniel,  who  said,  long  be 
fore,  that  the  body's 

"  Walls,  grown  thin,  permit  the  mind 
To  look  out  thorough  and  his  frailty  find." 

"Waller  has  made  worse  nonsense  of  it  in  the  transfu 
sion.  It  might  seem  that  Ben  Jonson  had  a  prophetic 
foreboding  of  him  when  he  wrote  :  "  Others  there  are 
that  have  no  composition  at  all,  but  a  kind  of  tuning 
and  rhyming  fall,  in  what  they  write.  It  runs  and 
slides  and  only  makes  a  sound.  Women's  poets  they 
are  called,  as  you  have  women's  tailors. 

They  write  a  verse  as  smooth,  as  soft,  as  cream 
In  which  there  is  no  torrent,  nor  scarce  stream. 

You  may  sound  these  wits  and  find  the  depth  of  them 
with  your  middle-finger."  *  It  seems  to  have  been  ta 
ken  for  granted  by  Waller,  as  afterwards  by  Dryden, 
that  our  elder  poets  bestowed  no  thought  upon  their 
verse.  "  Waller  was  smooth,"  but  unhappily  he  was 
also  flat,  and  his  importation  of  the  French  theory  of 
the  couplet  as  a  kind  of  thought-coop  did  nothing  but 
mischief,  f  He  never  compassed  even  a  smoothness  ap 
proaching  this  description  of  a  nightingale's  song  by  a 
third-rate  poet  of  the  earlier  school,  — 

"  Trails  her  plain  ditty  in  one  long-spun  note 
Through  the  sleek  passage  of  her  open  throat, 
A  clear,  unwrinkled  song,"  — 

*  Discoveries. 

t  What  a  wretched  rhymer  he  could  be  we  may  see  in  his  alteration 
of  the  "Maid's  Tragedy"  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher:  — 

"  Not  long  since  walking  in  the  field, 
My  nurse  and  I,  we  there  beheld 
A  goodly  fruit ;  which,  tempting  me, 
I  would  have  plucked ;  but,  trembling,  she, 
Whoever  eat  those  berries,  cried, 
In  less  than  half  an  hour  died!  " 

What  intolerable  seesaw!    Not  much  of  Byron's  "  fatal  facility" 
in  these  octosyllabics ! 


DEYDEN.  53 


ay  it,  \ 

:  first  I 
verse.  » 


one  of  whose  beauties  is  its  running  over  into  the  third 
verse.     Those  poets  indeed 

"  Felt  music's  pulse  in  all  her  arteries  " ; 
and  Dryden  himself  found  out,  when  he  came  to  try 
that  blank  verse  was  not  so  easy  a  thing  as  he  at 
conceived  it,  nay,  that  it  is  the  most  difficult  of  all  verse, 
and  that  it  must  make  up  in  harmony,  by  variety  of 
pause  and  modulation,  for  what  it  loses  in  the  melody 
of  rhyme.  In  what  makes  the  chief  merit  of  his  later 
versification,  he  but  rediscovered  the  secret  of  his  pre 
decessors  in  giving  to  rhymed  pentameters  something  of 
the  freedom  of  blank  verse,  and  not  mistaking  metre  for 
rhythm. 

Voltaire,  in  his  Commentary  on  Corneille,  has  suffi 
ciently  lamented  the  awkwardness  of  movement  imposed 
upon  the  French  dramatists  by  the  gyves  of  rhyme. 
But  he  considers  the  necessity  of  overcoming  this  ob 
stacle,  on  the  whole,  an  advantage.  Difficulty  is  his 
tenth  and  superior  muse.  How  did  Dryden,  who  says 
nearly  the  same  thing,  succeed  in  his  attempt  at  the 
French  manner "?  He  fell  into  every  one  of  its  vices, 
without  attaining  much  of  what  constitutes  its  excel 
lence.  From  the  nature  of  the  language,  all  French 
poetry  is  purely  artificial,  and  its  high  polish  is  all  that 
keeps  out  decay.  The  length  of  their  dramatic  verse 
forces  the  French  into  much  tautology,  into  bombast  in 
its  original  meaning,  the  stuffing  out  a  thought  with 
words  till  it  fills  the  line.  The  rigid  system  of  their 
rhyme,  which  makes  it  much  harder  to  manage  than  in 
English,  has  accustomed  them  to  inaccuracies  of  thought 
which  would  shock  them  in  prose.  For  example,  in  the 
"  Cinna  "  of  Corneille,  as  originally  written,  Emilie  says 
to  Augustus,  — 

"  Ces  flammes  dans  nos  coeurs  des  longtemps  e"toient  ne"es, 
Et  ce  sont  des  secrets  de  plus  de  quatre  anndes." 


54  DRYDEN. 

I  say  nothing  of  the  second  verse,  which  is  purely  pro 
saic  surplusage  exacted  by  the  rhyme,  nor  of  the  jin 
gling  together  of  ces,  des,  etoient,  nees,  des,  and  secrets, 
but  I  confess  that  nees  does  not  seem  to  be  the  epithet 
that  Corneille  would  have  chosen  foY.flammes,  if  he  could 
have  had  his  own  way,  and  that  flames  would  seem  of 
all  things  the  hardest  to  keep  secret.  But  in  revising, 
Corneille  changed  the  first  verse  thus,  — 

"  Ces  flammes  dans  nos  coeurs  sans  wire,  ordre  e'toient  ne"es." 

Can  anything  be  more  absurd  than  flames  born  to  order  1 
Yet  Voltaire,  on  his  guard  against  these  rhyming  pit 
falls  for  'the  sense,  does  not  notice  this  in  his  minute 
comments  on  this  play.  Of  extravagant  metaphor,  the 
result  of  this  same  making  sound  the  file-leader  of  sense, 
a  single  example  from  "  Heraclius  "  shall  suffice  :  — 

"  La  vapeur  de  mon  sang  ira  grossir  la  foudre 
Que  Dieu  tient  deja  prete  a  le  reduire  en  poudre." 

One  cannot  think  of  a  Louis  Quatorze  Apollo  except  in 
a  full-bottomed  periwig,  and  the  tragic  style  of  their 
poets  is  always  showing  the  disastrous  influence  of  that 
portentous  comet.  It  is  the  style  perruque  in  another 
than  the  French  meaning  of  the  phrase,  and  the  skill 
lay  in  dressing  it  majestically,  so  that,  as  Cibber  says, 
"  upon  the  head  of  a  man  of  sense,  if  it  became  him,  it 
could  never  fail  of  drawing  to  him  a  more  partial  regard 
and  benevolence  than  could  possibly  be  hoped  for  in  an 
ill-made  one."  It  did  not  become  Dryden,  and  he  left 
it  off.* 

Like  his  own  Zimri,  Dryden  was  "all  for"  this  or 
that  fancy,  till  he  took  up  with  another.  But  even 
while  he  was  writing  on  French  models,  his  judgment 
could  not  be  blinded  to  their  defects.  "  Look  upon  the 

*  In  more  senses  than  one.  His  last  and  best  portrait  shows  him  in 
his  own  gray  hair. 


DRYDEN.  55 

'  China'  and  the  '  Pompey,'  they  are  not  so  properly  to 
be  called  plays  as  long  discourses  of  reason  of  State,  and 
'  Polieucte '  in  matters  of  religion  is  as  solemn  as  the 
long  stops  upon  our  organs ;  .  .  .  .  their  actors  speak 

by  the  hour-glass  like  our  parsons I  deny  not 

but  this  may  suit  well  enough  with  the  French,  for  as 
we,  who  are  a  more  sullen  people,  come  to  be  diverted 
at  our  plays,  so  they,  who  are  of  an  airy  and  gay  tem 
per,  come  thither  to  make  themselves  more  serious."  * 
With  what  aii  air  of  innocent  unconsciousness  the  sar 
casm  is  driven  home  !  Again,  while  he  was  still  slaving 
at  these  bricks  without  straw,  (he  says  :  "  The  present 
French  poets  are  generally  accused  that,  wheresoever 
they  lay  the  scene,  or  in  whatever  age,  the  manners  of 
their  heroes  are  wholly  French.  Racine's  Bajazet  is 
bred  at  Constantinople,  but  his  civilities  are  conveyed  to 
him  by  some  secret  passage  from  Versailles  into  the  Se 
raglio."  It  is  curious  that  Voltaire,  speaking  of  the  Bere 
nice  of  Racine,  praises  a  passage  in  it  for  precisely  what 
Dryden  condemns  :  "  II  semble  qu'on  entende  Ilenriette 
d'Arfgleterre  elle-meme  parlant  au  marquis  de  Vardes. 
La  politesse  de  la  cour  de  Louis  XIV.,  1'agrement  de  la 
langue  Frangaise,  la  douceur  de  la  versification  la  plus 
naturelle,  le  sentiment  le  plus  tendre,  tout  se  trouve 
dans  ce  peu  de  vers."  After  Dryden  had  broken  away 
from  the  heroic  style,  he  speaks  out  more  plainly.  In 
the  Preface  to  his  "All  for  Love,"  in  reply  to  some 
cavils  upon  "  little,  and  not  essential  decencies,"  the  de 
cision  about  which  he  refers  to  a  master  of  ceremonies, 
he  goes  on  to  say  :  "  The  French  poets,  I  confess,  are 
strict  observers  of  these  punctilios ;  ....  in  this  nice 
ty  of  manners  does  the  excellency  of  French  poetry  con 
sist.  Their  heroes  are  the  most  civil  people  breathing, 
but  their  good  breeding  seldom  extends  to  a  word  of 

*  Essay  on  Dramatick  Poesy. 


56  DRYDEN. 

sense.  All  their  wit  is  in  their  ceremony ;  they  want 
the  genius  which  animates  our  stage,  and  therefore  't 
is  but  necessary,  when  they  cannot  please,  that  they 
should  take  care  not  to  offend They  are  so  care 
ful  not  to  exasperate  a  critic  that  they  never  leave  him 
any  work,  ....  for  no  part  of  a  poem  is  worth  our 
discommending  where  the  whole  is  insipid,  as  when  we 
have  once  tasted  palled  wine  we  stay  not  to  examine  it 
glass  by  glass.  But  while  they  affect  to  shine  in  trifles, 

they  are  often  careless  in  essentials For  my  part, 

I  desire  to  be  tried  by  the  laws  of  my  own  country." 
This  is  said  in  heat,  but  it  is  plain  enough  that  his  mind 
was  wholly  changed.  In  his  discourse  on  epic  poetry  he  is 
as  decided,  but  more  temperate.  He  says  that  the  French 
heroic  verse  "  runs  with  more  activity  than  strength.* 
Their  language  is  not  strung  with  sinews  like  our  Eng 
lish  j  it  has  the  iiimbleness  of  a  greyhound,  but  not  the 
bulk  and  body  of  a  mastiff.  Our  men  and  our  verses 
overbear  them  by  their  weight,  and  pondere,  non  nume- 
ro,  is  the  British  motto.  The  French  have  set  up  pur 
ity  for  the  standard  of  their  language,  and  a  masculine 
vigor  is  that  of  ours.  Like  theii;  tongue  is  the  genius 
of  their  poets,  —  light  and  trifling  in  comparison  of  the 
English."  t 

Dry  den  might  have  profited  by  an  admirable  saying 

*  A  French  hendecasyllable  verse  runs  exactly  like  our  ballad 
measure :  — 

A  cobbler  there  was  and  he  lived  in  a  stall,  .... 
La  raison,pour  marcher,  ria  souvent  qu'une  voye. 

(Dryden's  note.) 

The  verse  is  not  a  hendecasyllable.  "  Attended  watchfully  to  her 
recitative  (Mile.  Duchesnois),  and  find  that,  in  nine  lines  out  of  ten, 
'A  cobbler  there  was,'  &c.,  is  the  tune  of  the  French  heroics."  — 
Moore's  Diary,  24th  April,  1821. 

f  "  The  language  of  the  age  is  never  the  language  of  poetry,  except 
among  the  French,  whose  verse,  where  the  thought  or  image  does  not 
support  it,  differs  in  nothing  from  prose." —  GRAY  to  WEST. 


DRYDEN.  57 


au\ 

em-  I 
n,™  / 


of  his  own,  that  "  they  who  would  combat  general 
thority  with  particular  opinion  must  first  establish  them 
selves  a  reputation  of  understanding  better  than  other 
men."     He  understood  the    defects   much   better  than 
the  beauties  of  the  French  theatre.     Lessing  was  even 
more  one-sided  in  his  judgment  upon  it.*     Goethe,  with 
his  usual  wisdom,  studied  it  carefully  without  losing  his 
temper,   and  tried  to   profit  by   its    structural  merits. 
Dryden,  with  his  eyes  wide  open,  copied  its  worst  faults, 
especially  its  declamatory  sentiment.     He  should  have 
known  that  certain  things  can  never  be   transplanted, 
and  that  among  these  is  a  style  of  poetry  whose  great 
excellence  was  that  it  was  in  perfect  sympathy  with  the 
genius  of  the  people  among  whom  it  came  into  being,    v 
I  But  the  truth  is,  that  Dryden  had  no  aptitude  whatever 
for  the  stagehand  in  writing  for  it  he  was  attempting    i 
to  make  a  trade  of  his  genius,  —  an  arrangement  from    ' 
which  the  genius  always  withdraws  in  disgust.     It  was 
easier  to  make  loose  thinking  and  the  bad  writing  which 
betrays  it  pass  unobserved  while  the  ear  was  occupied 
witfh  the:  sonorous  music  of  the  rhyme  to  which  they 
marched.     Except  in  "All  for  Love,"  "the  only -play,"  / 
he  tells  us,  "  which  he  wrote  to  please  himself,"  |  there  | 
is  no  trace  of  real  passion  in  any  of  his  tragedies.     This, 
indeed,  is  inevitable,  for  there  are  110  characters,  but  only 
personages,  in  any  except  that.     That  is,  in  many  re 
spects,   a  noble   play,   and  there  are  few  finer  scenes, 

*  Diderot  and  Rousseau,  however,  thought  their  language  unfit  for 
poetry,  and  Voltaire  seems  to  have  half  agreed  with  them.  No  one 
has  expressed  this  feeling  more  neatly  than  Fauriel  :  "  Nul  doute  que 
Ton  ne  puisse  dire  en  prose  des  choses  eminemment  poetiques,  tout 
comme  il  n'est  que  trop  certain  que  Ton  peuten  dire  de  fort  prosaiques 
en  vers,  et  meme  en  excellents  vers,  en  vers  dle'gamment  tourne"s,  et 
en  beau  langage.  C'est  un  fait  dont  je  n'ai  pas  besoin  d'indiquer 
d'exemples  :  aucune  litterature  n'en  fournirait  autant  que  le  notre."  — 
Hist,  de  la  Poesie  Provencale,  II.  231 

t  Parallel  of  Poetry  and  Painting. 
3* 


58  DRYDEN. 

whether  in  the  conception  or  the  carrying  out,  than  that 
between  Antony  and  Ventidius  in  the  first  act.* 

As  usual,  Dryden's  good  sense  was  not  blind  to  the 
extravagances  of  his  dramatic  style.  In  "Mac  Flecknoe  " 
he  makes  his  own  Maximin  the  type  of  childish  rant, 

"  And  little  Maximins  the  gods  defy"  ; 

but,  as  usual  also,  he  could  give  a  plausible  reason  for 
his  own  mistakes  by  means  of  that  most  fallacious  of  all 
fallacies  which  is  true  so  far  as  it  goes.  In  his  Prologue 
to  the  "  Royal  Martyr  "  he  says  :  — 

"  And  he  who  servilely  creeps  after  sense  '• 
Is  safe,  but  ne'er  will  reach  an  excellence. 

But,  when  a  tyrant  for  his  theme  he  had, 
He  loosed  the  reins  and  let  his  muse  run  ma&, 
And,  though  he  stumbles  in  a  full  career, 
Yet  rashness  is  a  better  fault  than  fear; 

They  then,  who  of  each  trip  advantage  take, 

Find  out  those  faults  which  they  want  wit  to  make." 

And  in  the  Preface  to  the  same  play  he  tells  us :  "I 
have  not  everywhere  observed  the  equality  of  numbers 
in  my  verse,  partly  by  reason  of  my  haste,  but  more  es 
pecially  because  I  would  not  have  my  sense  a  slave  to  syl 
lables"  Dryden,  when  he  had  not  a  bad  case  to  argue, 
would  have  had  small  respect  for  the  wit  whose  skill  lay 
in  the  making  of  faults,  and  has  himself,  where  his  self- 
love  was  not  engaged,  admirably  defined  the  boundary 
which  divides  boldness  from  rashness.  What  Quintilian 
says  of  Seneca  applies  very  aptly  to  Dryden  :  "  Velles 
eum  suo  ingenio  dixisse,  alieno  judicio."  f  He  was  think 
ing  of  himself,  I  fancy,  when  he  makes  Ventidius  say  of 
Antony,  — 

*  "  II  y  a  seulementla  scene  de  Ventidius  et  d'Antoine  qui  est  digne 
de  Corneille.  C'est  la  le  sentiment  de  milord  Bolingbroke  et  de  tous 
les  bons  auteurs  ;  c'est  ainsi  que  pensait  Addisson."  —  VOLTAIRE  to 
M.  DE  FROMONT,  15th  November,  1735. 

f  Inst.  X.,  i.  129. 


DRYDEN.  59 

"  He  starts  out  wide 

And  bounds  into  a  vice  that  bears  him  far 
From  his  first  course,  and  plunges  him  in  ills ; 
But,  when  his  danger  makes  him  find  his  fault, 
Quick  to  observe,  and  full  of  sharp  remorse, 
He  censures  eagerly  his  own  misdeeds, 
Judging  himself  with  malice  to  himself, 
And  not  forgiving  what  as  man  he  did 
Because  his  other  parts  are  more  than  man." 

(  But  bad  though  they  nearly  all  are  as  wholes,  his  plays 
contain  passages  which  only  the  great  masters  have  sur 
passed,  and  to  the  level  of  which  no  subsequent  writer 
for  the  stage  has  ever  risen.  '  The  necessity  of  rhyme 
often  forced  him  to  a  platitude,  as  where  he  says,  — 

"  My  love  was  blind  to  your  deluding  art, 
But  blind  men  feel  when  stabbed  so  near  the  heart."  * 

But  even  in  rhyme  he  not  seldom  justifies  his  claim  to 
the  title  of  "  glorious  John."  In  the  very  play  from 
which  I  have  just  ^  quoted  are  these  verses  in  his  best 
manner :  — 

"  No,  like  his  better  Fortune  I  '11  appear, 
With  open  arms,  loose  veil,  and  flowing  hair, 
Just  flying  forward  from  her  rolling  sphere." 

His  comparisons,  as  I  have  said,  are  almost  always  hap 
py.  This,  from  the  "  Indian  Emperor,"  is  tenderly 
pathetic  :  — 

"  As  callow  birds, 

Whose  mother  's  killed  in  seeking  of  the  prey, 
Cry  in  their  nest  and  think  her  long  away, 
And,  at  each  leaf  that  stirs,  each  blast  of  wind, 
Gape  for  the  food  which  they  must  never  find." 

And  this,  of  the  anger  with  which  the  Maiden  Queen, 
striving  to  hide  her  jealousy,  betrays  her  love,  is  vigor 
ous  :  — 

"  Her  rage  was  love,  and  its  tempestuous  flame, 
Like  lightning,  showed  the  heaven  from  whence  it  came. 

*  Conquest  of  Grenada,  Second  Part. 


\ 


-60  DKYDEN. 

The  following  simile  from  the  "  Conquest  of  Grenada  "* 
is  as  well  expressed  as  it  is  apt  in  conception  :  — 

"  I  scarcely  understand  my  own  intent; 

But,  silk-worm  like,  so  long  within  haA7e  wrought, 
That  I  am  lost  in  my  own  web  of  thought." 

In  the  "Rival  Ladies,"  Angelina,  walking  in  the  dark, 
describes  her  sensations  naturally  and  strikingly  :  — 

"  No  noise  but  what  my  footsteps  make,  and  they 
Sound  dreadfully  and  louder  than  by  day : 
They  double  too,  and  every  step  I  take 
Sounds  thick,  methinks,  and  more  than  one  could  make." 

In  all  the  rhymed  plays*  there  are  many  passages 
which  one  is  rather  inclined  to  like  than  sure  he  would 
be  right  in  liking  them.  The  following  verses  from 
"  Aurengzebe  "  are  of  this  sort  :  — 

"  My  love  was  such  it  needed  no  return, 
Rich  in  itself,  like  elemental  fire, 
Whose  pureness  does  no  aliment  require." 

This  is  Cowleyish,  and  pureness  is  surely  the  wrong 
word ;  and  yet  it  is  better  than  mere  commonplace. 
Perhaps  what  oftenest  turns  the  balance  in  Dryden's 
favor,  when  we  are  weighing  his  claims  as  a  poet,  is  his 
persistent  capability^  of  enthusiasm.  To  the  last  he 
kindles,  and  sometimes  almost  flashes  out  that  super 
natural  light  which  is  the  supreme  test  of  poetic  genius. 
As  he  himself  so  finely  and  characteristically  says  in 
"Aurengzebe,"  there  was  no  period  in  his  IhVwhen  it 
was  not  true  of  him  that 

"  He  felt  the  inspiring  heat,  the  absent  god  return." 
The  verses  which  follow  are  full  of  him;  and,  with  the 
exception  of  the  single  word  underwent,  are  in  his  lucki 
est  manner :  — 

"  One  loose,  one  sally  of  a  hero's  soul, 
Does  all  the  military  art  control. 

*  In  most,  he  mingles  blank  verse. 


DRYDriN.  61 

While  timorous  wit  gees  rourrf,  or  ford??  the  shore, 
He  shoots  the  gulf,  and  is  already  j'fc/, 
And,  when  the  enthusiastic  fit  is  spent, 
Looks  back  amazed  at  what  he  underwent."  * 

Pithy  sentences  and  phrases  always  drop  from  Dry-  \| 
den's  pen  as  if  unawares,  whether  in  prose  or  verse.  I  f" 
string  together  a  few  at  random  :  — 

"  The  greatest  argument  for  love  is  love." 
"  Few  know  the  use  of  life  before  'tis  past." 
"  Time  gives  himself  and  is  not  valued." 
"  Death  in  itself  is  nothing;  but  we  fear 

To  be  we  know  not  what,  we  know  not  where." 
"  Love  either  finds  equality  or  makes  it; 

Like  death,  he  knows  no  difference  in  degrees." 
"  That's  empire,  that  which  I  can  give  away." 
"  Yours  is  a  soul  irregularly  great, 

Which,  wanting  temper,  yet  abounds  in  heat." 
"  Forgiveness  to  the  injured  does  belong, 

But  they  ne'er  pardon  who  have  done  the  wrong." 

"  Poor  women's  thoughts  are  all  extempore." 

"  The  cause  of  love  can  never  be  assigned, 

'T  is  in  no  face,  but  in  the  lover's  mind."  f 
"  Heaven  can  forgive  a  crime  to  penitence, 

For  Heaven  can  judge  if  penitence  be  true; 

But  man,  who  knows  not  hearts,  should  make  examples." 

"  Kings'  titles  commonly  begin  by  force, 
Which  time  wears  off  and  mellows  into  right." 

"Fear's  a  large  promiser;  who  subject  live 

To  that  base  passion,  know  not  what  they  give." 

"  The  secret  pleasure  of  the  generous  act 
Is  the  great  mind's  great  bribe." 

.   "  That  bad  thing,  gold,  buys  all  good  things." 
"  Why,  love  does  all  that 's  noble  here  below." 

*  Conquest  of  Grenada. 

t  This  recalls  a  striking  verse  of  Alfred  de  Musset:  — 

;t  La  muse  est  toujours  belle, 
Meme  pour  1'insense",  meme  pour  1'impuissant, 
Car  sa  beaute  pour  nous,  c'est  noire  amour  pour  elle." 


62  DRYDEN. 

"  To  prove  religion  true, 
If  either  wit  or  sufferings  could  suffice, 
All  faiths  afford  the  constant  and  the  wise." 

But  Dryden,  as  he  tells  us  himself, 

"  Grew  weary  of  his  long-loved  mistress,  Rhyme; 
Passion  's  too  fierce  to  be  in  fetters  bound, 
And  Nature  flies  him  like  enchanted  ground." 

The  finest  things  in  his  plays  were  written  in  blank 
verse,  as  vernacular  to  him  as  the  alexandrine  to  the 
French.  In  this  he  vindicates  his  claim  as  a  poet.  His 
diction  gets  wings,  and  both  his  verse  and  his  thought 
become  capable  of  a  reach  which  was  denied  them  when 
set  in  the  stocks  of  the  couplet.  The  solid  man  becomes 
even  airy  in  this  new-found  freedom^  Anthony  says, 

"  How  I  loved, 

Witness  ye  days  and  nights,  and  all  ye  hours 
That  danced  away  with  down  upon  your  feet." 

And  what  image  was  ever  more  delicately  exquisite, 
what  movement  more  fadingly  accordant  with  the  sense, 
than  in  the  last  two  verses  of  the  following  passage  ? 

"  I  feel  death  rising  higher  still  and  higher, 
Within  my  bosom;  every. breath  I  fetch 
Shuts  up  my  life  within  a  shorter  compass, 
And,  like  the  vanishing  sound  of  bells,  grows  less 
And  less  each  pulse,  till  it  be  lost  in  air.'1'1  * 

Nor  was  he  altogether  without  pathos,  though  it  is  rare 
with  him.  The  following  passage  seems  to  me  tenderly 
full  of  it  :  — 

"  Something  like 

That  voice,  methinks,  I  should  have  somewhere  heard ; 
But  floods  of  woe  have  hurried  it  far  off 
Beyond  my  ken  of  soul."  f 

And  this  single  verse  from  "  Aurengzebe  "  :  — 
"  Live  still!  oh  live!  live  even  to  be  unkind!  " 
with  its  passionate  eagerness  and  sobbing  repetition,  is 
*  Rival  Ladies.  t  Don  Sebastian. 


DRY  DEN.  63 

worth  a  ship-load  of  the  long-drawn  treacle  of  modern 
self-compassion. 

Now  and  then,  to  be  sure,  we  come  upon  something 
that  makes  us  hesitate  again  whether,  after  all,  Dryden 
was  not  grandiose  rather  than  great,  as  in  the  two  pas 
sages  that  next  follow  :  — 

"  He  looks  secure  of  death,  superior  greatness, 
Like  Jove  when  he  made  Fate  and  said,  Thou  art 
The  slave  of  my  creation."  * 

"  I  'm  pleased  with  my  owq  work;  Jove  was  not  more 
With  infant  nature,  when  his  spacious  hand 
Had  rounded  this  huge  ball  of  earth  and  seas, 
To  give  it  the  first  push  and  see  it  roll 
Along  the  vast  abyss."  f 

.1  should  say  that  Dryden  is  more  apt  to  dilate  ourv 
fancy  than  our  thought,  as  great  poets  have  the  gift  of  | 
doing.  But  if  he  have  not  the  potent  alchemy  that?) 
transmutes  the  lead  of  our  commonplace  associations  into/ 
gold,  as  Shakespeare  knows  how  to  do  so  easily,  yet  his 
sense  is  always  up  to  the  sterling  standard  ;  and  though 
he  has  not  added  so  much  as  some  have  done  to  the 
stock  of  bullion  which  others  afterwards  coin  and  put 
in  circulation,  there  are  few  who  have  minted  so  many 
phrases  that  are  still  a  part  of  our  daily  currency.  The 
first  line  of  the  following  passage  has  been  worn  pretty 
smooth,  but  the  succeeding  ones  are  less  familiar  :  — 

"  Men  are  but  children  of  a  larger  growth, 
Our  appetites  as  apt  to  change  as  theirs, 
And  full  as  craving  too  and  full  as  vain ; 
And  yet  the  soul,  shut  up  in  her  dark  room, 
Viewing  so  clear  abroad,  at  home  sees  nothing; 
But,  like  a  mole  in  earth,  busy  and  blind, 
Works  all  her  folly  up  and  casts  it  outward 
In  the  world's  open  view."  J 

The  image  is  mixed  and  even  contradictory,  but  the 
thought  obtains  grace  for  it.  I  feel  as  if  Shakespeare 
would  have  written  seeing  for  viewing,  thus  gaining  the 

*  Don  Sebastian.  f  Cleomenes,  \  All  for  Love. 


\ 


64  DRYDEN. 

strength  of  repetition  in  one  verse  and  avoiding  the 
sameness  of  it  in  the  other.  {  Dryden,  I  suspect,  was  not 
much  given  to  correction,  and  indeed  one  of  the  great 
charms  of  his  best  writing  is  that  everything  seems  struck 
off  at  a  heat,  as  by  a  superior  man  in  the  best  mood  of 
his  talk.  Where  he  rises,  he  generally  becomes  fervent 
rather  than  imaginative  ;  his  thought  does  not  incorpo 
rate  itself  in  metaphor,  as  in  purely  poetic  minds,  but 
repeats  and  reinforces  itself  in  simile.  Where  he  is  im 
aginative,  it  is  in  that  lower  sense  which  the  poverty  of 
our  language,  for  want  of  a  better  word,  compels  us  to 
call  picturesque,  and  even  then  he  shows  little  of  that 
finer  instinct  which  suggests  so  much  more  than  it  tells, 
and  works  the  more  powerfully  as  it  taxes  more  the  im 
agination  of  the  reader. ,)  In  Donne's  "  Relic  "  there  is 
an  example  of  what  I  mean.  He  fancies  some  one  break 
ing  up  his  grave  and  spying 

"  A  bracelet  of  bright  hair  about  the  bone,"  — 

a  verse  that  still  shines  there  in  the  darkness  of  the 
tomb,  after  two  centuries,  like  one  of  those  inextinguish 
able  lamps  whose  secret  is  lost.*  Yet  Dryden  some 
times  showed  a  sense  of  this  magic  of  a  mysterious  hint, 
as  in  the  "  Spanish  Friar  "  :  — 

"  No,  I  confess,  you  bade  me  not  in  words ; 
The  dial  spoke  not,  but  it  made  shrewd  signs, 
And  pointed  full  upon  the  stroke  of  murder." 

This  is  perhaps  a  solitary  example.  Nor  is  he  always 
so  possessed  by  the  image  in  his  mind  as  unconsciously 

*  Dryden,  with  his  wonted  perspicacity,  follows  Ben  Jonson  in  call 
ing  Donne  "  the  greatest  wit,  though  not  the  best  poet,  of  our  nation." 
(Dedication  of  Eleonora.)  Even  as  a  poet  Donne 

"  Had  in  him  those  brave  translunary  things 

That  our  first  poets  had." 

To  open  vistas  for  the  imagination  through  the  blind  wall  of  the  senses, 
as  he  could  sometimes  do,  is  the  supreme  function  of  poetry. 


DRYDEN.  65 

to  choose  even  the  picturesquely  imaginative  word.  He 
has  done  so,  however,  in  this  passage  from  "  Marriage 
&  la  Mode  "  :  — 

"  You  ne'er  must  hope  again  to  see  your  princess, 
Except  as  prisoners  view  fair  walks  and  streets, 
And  careless  passengers  going  by  their  grates." 

But  after  all,  he  is  best  upon  a  level,  table-land,  it  1 
is  true,  and  a  very  high  level,  but  still  somewhere  be 
tween  the  loftier  peaks  of  inspiration  and  the  plain  of 
every-day  life.  In  those  passages  where  he  moralizes 
he  is  always  good,  setting  some  obvious  truth  in  a  new 
light  by  vigorous  phrase  and  happy  illustration.  Take 
this  (from  "  (Edipus  ")  as  a  proof  of  it  :  — 

"  The  gods  are  just, 
But  how  can  finite  measure  infinite  ? 
Reason !  alas,  it  does  not  know  itself  ! 
Yet  man,  vain  man,  would  with  his  short-lined  plummet 
Fathom  the  vast  abyss  of  heavenly  justice. 
Whatever  is,  is  in  its  causes  just, 
Since  all  things  are  by  fate.     But  purblind  man 
Sees  but  a  part  o'  th'  chain,  the  nearest  links, 
His  eyes  not  carrying  to  that  equal  beam 
That  poises  all  above." 

From  the  same  play  I  pick  an  illustration  of  that  ripened   1 
sweetness  of  thought    and  language  which   marks  the 
natural  vein  of  Dryden.     One  cannot  help  applying  the 
passage  to  the  late  Mr.  Quincy  :  — 

"  Of  no  distemper,  of  no  blast  he  died, 
But  fell  like  autumn  fruit  that  mellowed  long, 
E'en  wondered  at  because  he  dropt  no  sooner; 
Fate  seemed  to  wind  him  up  for  fourscore  years ; 
Yet  freshly  ran  he  on  ten  winters  more, 
Till,  like  a  clock  worn  out  with  eating  Time, 
The  wheels  of  weary  life  at  last  stood  still."  * 

Here  is  another  of  the  same  kind  from  "All  for  Love"  :-— 

*  My  own  judgment  is  my  sole  warrant  for  attributing  these  extracts 
from  (Edipus  to  Dryden  rather  than  Lee. 


I 


60  DRYDEN. 

"  Gone  so  soon ! 

Is  Death  no  more?    He  used  him  carelessly, 
With  a  familiar  kindness ;  ere  he  knocked, 
Ean  to  the  door  and  took  him  in  his  arms, 
As  who  should  say,  You  're  welcome  at  all  hours, 
A  friend  need  give  no  warning." 

With  one  more  extract  from  the  same  play,  which 
is  in  every  way  his  best,  for  he  had,  when  he  wrote  it, 
been  feeding  on  the  bee-bread  of  Shakespeare,  I  shall 
conclude.  Antony  says, 

"  For  I  am  now  so  sunk  from  what  I  was, 
Thou  find'st  me  at  my  lowest  water-mark. 
The  rivers  that  ran  in  and  raised  my  fortunes 
Are  all  dried  up,  or  take  another  course  : 
What  I  have  left  is  from  my  native  spring; 
I  've  a  heart  still  that  swells  in  scorn  of  Fate, 
And  lifts  me  to  my  banks." 

This  is  certainly,  from  beginning  to  end,  in  what  used 
to  be  called  the  grand  style,  at  once  noble  and  natural. 
I  have  not  undertaken  to  analyze  any  one  of  the  plays, 
for  (except  in  "  All  for  Love  ")  it  would  have  been  only 
to  expose  their  weakness.  Dryden  had  no  constructive 
faculty  :  and  in  every  one  of  his  longer  poems  that  re 
quired  a  plot,  the  plot  is  bad,  always  more  or  less  incon 
sistent  with  itself,  and  rather  hitched-on  to  the  subject 
than  combining  with  it.  It  is  fair  to  say,  however, 
before  leaving  this  part  of  Dryden's  literary  work,  that 
Home  Tooke  thought  "  Don  Sebastian  "  "the  best  play 
extant."  *  Gray  admired  the  plays'  of  Dryden,  "  not  as 
dramatic  compositions,  but  as  poetry."  f  "  There  are  as 
many  things  finely  said  in  his  plays  as  almost  by  any 
body,"  said  Pope  to  Spence.  Of  their  rant,  their  fus 
tian,  their  bombast,  their  bad  English,  of  their  innu 
merable  sins  against  Dryden's  own  better  conscience 
both  as  poet  and  critic,  I  shall  excuse  myself  from 

*  Kecollections  of  Rogers,  p.  165. 

f  Nicholls's  Reminiscences  o£  Gray.    Pickering's  edition  of  Gray's 
Works,  Vol.  V.  p.  35. 


DRYDEN.  67 

giving  any  instances.*  I  like  what  is  good  in  Dryden 
so  much,  and  it  is  so  good,  that  I  think  Gray  was  justi 
fied  in  always  losing  his  temper  when  he  heard  "  his 
faults  criticised."  f 

It  is  as  a  satirist  and  pleader  in  verse  that  Dryden  is 
best  known,  and  as  both  he  is  in  some  respects  unrivalled. 
His  satire  is  not  so  sly  as  Chaucer's,  but  it  is  distin 
guished  by  the  same  good-nature.  There  is  no  malice  in 
it.  I  shall  not  enter  into  his  literary  quarrels  further 
than  to  say  that  he  seems  to  me,  on  the  whole,  to  have 
been  forbearing,  which  is  the  more  striking  as  he  tells 
us  repeatedly  that  he  was  naturally  vindictive.  It  was 
he  who  called  revenge  "  the  darling  attribute  of  heaven."  A 
"  I  complain  not  of  their  lampoons  and  libels,  though  I 
have  been  the  public  mark  for  many  years.  I  am  vin 
dictive  enough  to  have  repelled  force  by  force,  if  I  could 
imagine  that  any  of  them  had  ever  reached  me."  It 
was  this  feeling  of  easy  superiority,  I  suspect,  that  made 
him  the  mark  for  so  much  jealous  vituperation.  Scott 
is  wrong  in  attributing  his  onslaught  upon  Settle  to 
jealousy  because  one  of  the  latter's  plays  had  been  per 
formed  at  Court,  —  an  honor  never  paid  to  any  of  Dry- 
den's.  $  I  have  found  nothing  like  a  trace  of  jealousy  in 

*  Let  one  suffice  for  all.  In  the  "  Royal  Martyr,"  Porphyrius, 
awaiting  his  execution,  says  to  Maximin,  who  had  wished  him  for  a 
son-in-law  :  — 

"  Where'er  thou  stand'st,  I  '11  level  at  that  place 
My  gushing  blood,  and  spout  it  at  thy  face; 
Thus  not  by  marriage  we  our  blood  will  join  ; 
Nay,  more,  my  arms  shall  throw  my  head  at  thine." 
"  It  is  no  shame,"  says  Dryden  himself,  "  to  be  a  poet,  though  it  is 
to  be  a  bad  one." 

t  Gray,  ubi  supra,  p.  38. 

.  f  Scott  had  never  seen  Pepys's  Diary  when  he  wrote  this,  or  he 
would  have  left  it  unwritten  :  "  Fell  to  discourse  of  the  last  night's 
work  at  Court,  where  the  ladies  and  Duke  of  Monmouth  acted  the 
'  Indian  Emperor,'  wherein  they  told  me  these  things  most  remarkable 
that  not  any  woman  but  the  Duchess  of  Monnaouth  and  Mrs.  Corn- 


68  DRYDEN. 

that  large  and  benignant  nature.  In  his  vindication  of 
the  "  Duke  of  Guise,"  he  says,  with  honest  confidence 
in  himself :  "  Nay,  I  durst  almost  refer  myself  to  some 
of  the  angry  poets  on  the  other  side,  whether  I  have 
not  rather  countenanced  and  assisted  their  beginnings 
than  hindered  them  from  rising."  He  seems  to  have 
been  really  as  indifferent  to  the  attacks  on  himself  as 
Pope  pretended  to  be.  In  the  same  vindication  he  says 
of  the  "  Rehearsal,"  the  only  one  of  them  that  had  any 
wit  in  it,  and  it  has  a  great  deal  :  "  Much  less  am  I  con 
cerned  at  the  noble  name  of  Bayes ;  that 's  a  brat  so 
like  his  own  father  that  he  cannot  be  mistaken  for  any 
other  body.  They  might  as  reasonably  have  called  Tom 
Sternhold  Virgil,  and  the  resemblance  would  have  held 
as  well."  In  his  Essay  on  Satire  he  says  :  "  And  yet  we 
know  that  in  Christian  charity  all  offences  are  to  be  for^ 
given  as  we  expect  the  like  pardon  for  those  we  daily 
commit  against  Almighty  God.  And  this  consideration 
has  often  made  me  tremble  when  I  was  saying  our  Lord's 
Prayer  ;  for  the  plain  condition  of  the  forgiveness  which 
we  beg  is  the  pardoning  of  others  the  offences  which 
they  have  done  to  us ;  for  which  reason  I  have  many 
times  avoided  the  commission  of  that  fault,  even  when 
I  have  been  notoriously  provoked."*  And  in  another 
passage  he  says,  with  his  usual  wisdom :  "  Good  sense 
and  good-nature  are  never  separated,  though  the  ignorant 
world  has  thought  otherwise.  Good-nature,  by  which  I 
mean  beneficence  and  candor,  is  the  product  of  right 
reason,  which  of  necessity  will  give  allowance  to  the 
failings  of  others,  by  considering  that  there  is  nothing 

wall  is  did  anything  but  like  fools  and  stocks,  but  that  these  two  did  do 
most  extraordinary  well:  that  not  any  man  did  anything  well  but  Cap 
tain  0' Bryan,  who  spoke  and  did  well,  but  above  all  things  did  dance 
most  incomparably."  —  14th  January,  1668. 

*  See  also  that  noble  passage  in  the  "Hind  and  Panther"  (1573- 
1591),  where  this  is  put  into  verse.    Dryden  always  thought  in  prose. 


DRYDEN.  69 

perfect  in  mankind."  In  the  same  Essay  he  gives  his 
own  receipt  for  satire  :  "  How  easy  it  is  to  call  rogue  and 
villain,  and  that  wittily  !  but  how  hard  to  make  a  man 
appear  a  fool,  a  blockhead,  or  a  knave,  without  using 
any  of  those  opprobrious  terms  !  .  .  .  .  This  is  the  mys 
tery  of  that  noble  trade Neither  is  it  true  that 

this  fineness  of  raillery  is  offensive  :    a  witty  man  is    j 
tickled  while  he  is  hurt  in  this  manner,  and  a  fool  feels 
it  not There  is  a  vast  difference  between  the  slov 
enly  butchering  of  a  man  and  the  fineness  of  a  stroke  that 
separates  the  head  from  the  body,  and  leaves  it  standing  - 
in  its  place.     A  man  may  be  capable,  as  Jack  Ketch's    I 
wife  said  of  his  servant,  of  a  plain  piece  of  work,  of  a  \ 
bare  hanging ;  but  to  make  a  malefactor  die  sweetly  was 
only  belonging  to  her  husband.     I  wish  I  could  apply  it 
to  myself,  if  the  reader  would  be  kind  enough  to  think 
it  belongs  to  me.     The  character  of  Zimri  in  my  '  Absa 
lom  '  is,  in  my  opinion,  worth  the  whole  poem.     It  is 
not  bloody,  but  it  is  ridiculous  enough,  and  he  for  whom 
it  was  intended  was  too  witty  to  resent  it  as  an  injury. 
....  I  avoided  the  mention  of  great  crimes,  and  applied 
myself  to  the  representing  of  blind  sides  and  little  ex 
travagances,  to  which,  the  wittier  a  man  is,  he  is  gen-_^^. 
rally  the  more  obnoxious." 

Dryden  thought  his  genius  led  him  that  way.  In  his 
elegy  on  the  satirist  Oldham,  whom  Hallam,  without  read 
ing  him.  I  suspect,  ranks  next  to  Dryden,*  he  says  :  — 

"  For  sure  our  souls  were  near  allied,  and  thine 
Cast  in  the  same  poetic  mould  with  mine ; 
One  common  note  in  either  lyre  did  strike, 
And  knaves  and  fools  we  both  abhorred  alike." 

His  practice  is  not  always  so  delicate  as  his  theory ;  but 

*  Probably  on  the  authority  of  this  very  epitaph,  as  if  epitaphs  were 
to  be  believed  even  under  oath!  A  great  many  authors  live  because' 
we  read  nothing  but  their  tombstones.  Oldham  was,  to  borrow  one  of 
Dryden's  phrases,  "  a  bad  or,  which  is  worse,  an  indifferent  noet." 


70  DRYDEN. 

if  he  was  sometimes  rough,  he  never  took  a  base  advan 
tage.  He  knocks  his  antagonist  down,  and  there  an 
end.  Pope  seems  to  have  nursed  his  grudge,  and  then, 
watching  his  chance,  to  have  squirted  vitriol  from  behind 
a  corner,  rather  glad  than  otherwise  if  it  fell  on  the 
women  of  those  he  hated  or  envied.  And  if  Dryden  is 
never  dastardly,  as  Pope  often  was,  so  also  he  never 
wrote  anything  so  maliciously  depreciatory  as  Pope's  un 
provoked  attack  on  Addison.  ,  Dryden's  satire  is  often 
coarse,  but  where  it  is  coarsest,  it  is  commonly  in  defence 
of  himself  against  attacks  that  were  themselves  brutal. 
Then,  to  be  sure,  he  snatches  the  first  ready  cudgel,  as 
in  Shadwell's  case,  though  even  then  there  is  something 
of  the  good-humor  of  conscious  strength.  Pope's  provo 
cation  was  too  often  the  mere  opportunity  to  say  a  biting 
thing,  where  he  could  do  it  safely.  If  his  victim  showed 
fight,  he  tried  to  smooth  things  over,  as  with  Dennis. 
Dryden  could  forget  that  he  had  ever  had  a  quarrel,  but 
he  never  slunk  away  from  any,  least  of  all  from  one  pro 
voked  by  himself.*  Pope's  satire  is  too  much  occupied 
with  the  externals  of  manners,  habits,  personal  defects, 
and  peculiarities.  Dryden  goes  right  to  the  rooted 
character  of  the  man,  to  the  weaknesses  of  his  nature,*] 
as  where  he  says  of  Biirnet.:  — 

"  Prompt  to  assail,  and  careless  of  defence, 
Invulnerable  in  his  impudence, 
He  dares  the  world,  and,  eager  of  a  name, 
He  thrusts  about  and  justles  into  fame. 
So  fond  of  loud  report  that,  not  to  miss 
Of  being  known  (his  last  and  utmost  bliss), 
He  rather  would  be  known  for  what  he  is." 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  in  Pope  such  compression  of 
meaning  as  in  the  first,  or  such  penetrative  sarcasm  as 

*  "  He  was  of  a  nature  exceedingly  humane  and  compassionate, 
easily  forgiving  injuries,  and  capable  of  a  prompt  and  sincere  recon 
ciliation  with  them  that  had  offended  him."  —  CONGREVE. 


f  I 

DRYDEN.  71 

in  the  second  of  the  passages  I  have  underscored. 
Dryden's  satire  is  still  quoted  for  its  comprehensiveness 
of  application,  Pope's  rather  for  the  elegance  of  its  finish 
and  the  point  of  its  phrase  than  for  any  deeper  qual 
ities.*  I  do  not  remember  that  Dry  den  ever  makes 
poverty  a  reproach,  f  He  was  above  it,  alike  by  generos 
ity  of  birth  and  mind.  Pope  is  always  the  parvenu, 
always  giving  himself  the  airs  of  a  fine  gentleman,  and, 
like  Horace  Walpole  and  Byron/affecting  superiority  to 
professional  literature.  Dryden,  like  Lessing,  was  a 
hack-writer,  and  was  proud,  as  an  honest  man  has  a 
right  to  be,  of  being  able  to  get  his  bread  by  his  brains. 
He  lived  in  Grub  Street  all  his  life,  and  never  dreamed 
that  where  a  man  of  genius  lived  was  not  the  best 
quarter  of  the  town.  "  Tell  his  Majesty,"  said  sturdy 
old  Jonson,  "  that  his  soul  lives  in  an  alley." 

Dryden's  prefaces  are  a  mine  of  good  writing  and 
judicious  criticism.  His  obiter  dicta  have  often  the  pen 
etration,  and  always  more  than  the  equity,  of  Voltaire's, 
for  Dryden  never  loses  temper,  and  never  altogether 
qualifies  his  judgment  by  his  self-love.  "  He  was  a  more 
universal  writer  than  Voltaire,"  said  Home  Tooke,  and 
perhaps  it  is  true  .that  he  had  a  broader  view,  though 
his  learning  was  neither  so  extensive  nor  so  accurate. 

*  Coleridge  says  excellently:  "You  will  find  this  a  good  gauge  or 
criterion  of  genius,  —  whether  it  progresses  and  evolves,  or  only  spins 
upon  itself.  Take  Dryden's  Achitophel  and  Zimri;  every  line  adds  to 
or  modifies  the  character,  which  is,  as  it  were,  a-building  up  to  the 
very  last  verse;  whereas  in  Pope's  Timon,  &c.  the  first  two  or  three 
couplets  contain  all  the  pith  of  the  character,  and  the  twenty  or  thirty 
lines  that  follow  are  so  much  evidence  or  proof  of  overt  acts  of  jealousy, 
or  pride,  or  whatever  it  may  be  that  is  satirized."  (Table-Talk,  192.) 
Some  of  Dryden's  best  satirical  hits  are  let  fall  by  seeming  accident  in 
his  prose,  as  where  he  says  of  his  Protestant  assailants,  "  Most  of  them 
love  all  whores  but  her  of  Babylon."  They  had  first  attacked  him  on 
the  score  of  his  private  morals. 

t  That  he  taxes  Shadwell  with  it  is  only  a  seeming  exception,  as  any 
careful  reader  will  see. 


72  DEYDEN. 

My  space  will  not  afford  many  extracts,  but  I  cannot 
forbear  one  or  two.  He  says  of  Chaucer,  that  "  he  is  a 
perpetual  fountain  of  good  sense,"  *  and  likes  him  better 
than  Ovid,  —  a  bold  confession  in  that  day.  He  prefers 
the  pastorals  of  Theocritus  to  those  of  Virgil.  "Virgil's 
shepherds  are  too  well  read  in  the  philosophy  of  Epicurus 
and  of  Plato  "  ;  "  there  is  a  kind  of  rusticity  in  all  those 
pompous  verses,  somewhat  of  a  holiday  shepherd  strut 
ting  in  his  country  buskins  ";f  "Theocritus  is  softer 
than  Ovid,  he  touches  the  passions  more  delicately,  and 
performs  all  this  out  of  his  own  fund,  without  diving 
into  the  arts  and  sciences  for  a  supply.  Even  his  Doric 
dialect  has  an  incomparable  sweetness  in  his  clownish- 
ness,  like  a  fair  shepherdess,  in  her  country  russet, 
talking  in  a  Yorkshire  tone."$  Comparing  Virgil's  verse 
with  that  of  some  other  poets,  he  says,  that  his  "  num 
bers  are  perpetually  varied  to  increase  the  delight  of  the. 
reader,  so  that  the  same  sounds  are  never  repeated  twice 
together.  On  the  contrary,  Ovid  and  Claudian,  though 
they  write  in  styles  different  from  each  other,  yet  have 
each  of  them  but  one  sort  of  music  in  their  verses.  All 
the  versification  and  little  variety  of  Claudian  is  included 
within  the  compass  of  four  or  five  lines,  and  'then  he 
begins  again  in  the  same  tenor,  perpetually  closing  his 
sense  at  the  end  of  a  verse,  and  that  verse  commonly 
which  they  call  golden,  or  two  substantives  and  two 
adjectives  with  a  verb  betwixt  them  to  keep  the  peace. 
Ovid,  with  all  his  sweetness,  has  as  little  variety  of 
numbers  and  sound  as  he ;  he  is  always,  as  it  were,  upon 
the  hand-gallop,  and  his  verse  runs  upon  carpet-ground. "§ 
What  a  dreary  half-century  would  have  been  saved  to 
English  poetry,  could  Pope  have  laid  these  sentences  to 
heart  ! )  Upon  translation,  no  one  has  written  so  much 

*  Preface  to  Fables.  J  Preface  to  Second  Miscellany. 

t  Dedication  of  the  Georgics.        §  Ibid. 


DRYDEN.  73 

and  so  well  as  Dryden  in  his  various  prefaces.  What 
ever  has  been  said  since  is  either  expansion  or  variation 
of  what  he  had  said  before.  His  general  theory  may  be 
stated  as  an  aim  at  something  between  the  literalness  of 
metaphrase  and  the  looseness  of  paraphase.  "  Where  I 
have  enlarged,"  he  says,  "  I  desire  the  false  critics  would 
not  always  think  that  those  thoughts  are  wholly  mine, 
but  either  they  are  secretly  in  the  poet,  or  may  be  fairly 
deduced  from  him."  Coleridge,  with  his  usual  cleverness 
of  assimilation,  has  condensed  him  in  a  letter  to  Words- ' 
worth  :  "  There  is  no  medium  between  a  prose 'version 
and  one  on  the  avowed  principle  of  compensation  in  the 
widest  sense,  i.e.  manner,  genius,  total  effect."  * 

I  have  selected  these  passages,  not  because  they  are 
the  best,  but  because  they  have  a  near  application  to 
Dryden  himself.  His  own  characterization  of  Chaucer 
(though  too  narrow  for  the  greatest  but  one  of  English 
poets)  is  the  best  that  could  be  given  of  himself :  "  He  is 
a  perpetual  fountain  of  good  sense."  And  the  other  pas 
sages  show  him  a  close  and  open-minded  student  of 
the  art  he  professed.  Has,  his  influence  on  our  litera 
ture,  but  especially  on  our  poetry,  been  on  the  whole  for 
good  or  evil  1  If  he  could  have  been  read  with  the 
liberal  understanding  which  he  brought  to  the  works  of 
others,  I  should  answer  at  once  that  it  had  been  benefi 
cial.  But  his  translations  and  paraphrases,  in  some 
ways  the  best  things  he  did,  were  done,  like  his  plays, 
under  contract  to  deliver  a  certain  number  of  verses  for 
a  specified  sum.  V,  r^ne  versification,  of  which'  he  had 
learned  the  art  by  long  practice,  is  excellent,  but  his 
haste  has  led  him  to  fill  out  the  measure  of  lines  with 
phrases  that  add  only  to  dilute,  and  thus  the  clearest, 
the  most  direct,  the  most  manly  versifier  of  his  time  be 
came,  without  meaning  it,  the  source  (fons  et  origo  ma- 

*  Memoirs  of  Wordsworth,  Vol.  II.  p.  74  (American  edition). 

4 


I 


74  DRYDEN. 

lorum)  of  that  poetic  diction  from  which  our  poetry  has 

?not  even  yet  recovered/  I  do  not  like  to  say  it,  but  he 
has  sometimes  smothered  the  childlike  simplicity  of 
Chaucer  under  feather-beds  of  verbiage.  What  this 
kind  of  thing  came  to  in  the  next  century,  when  every 
body  ceremoniously  took  a  bushel-basket  to  bring  a 
wren's  egg  to  market  in,  is  only  too  sadly  familiar.  It  is 

\clear  that  his  natural  taste  led  Dryden  to  prefer  direct 
ness  and  simplicity  of  style.  If  he  was  too  often 
tempted  astray  by  Artifice,  his  love  of  Nature  betrays 
itself  in  many  an  almost  passionate  outbreak  of  angry 
remorse.  Addison  tells  us  that  he  took  particular  de- 
'  light  in  the  reading  of  our  old  English  ballads.  /What 
.  j  j  he  valued  above  all  things  was  Force,  though  in  his  haste 
ll )  he  is  willing  to  make  a  shift  with  its  counterfeit,  Effect/ 
As  usual,  he  had  a  good  reason  to  urge  for  what  he 
did  :  "I  will  not  excuse,  but  justify  myself  for  one  pre 
tended  crime  for  which  I  am  liable  to  be  charged  by 
false  critics,  not  only  in  this  translation,  but  in  many  of 
my  original  poems,  —  that  I  Latinize  too  much.  It  is 
true  that  when  I  find  an  English  word  significant  and 
sounding,  I  neither  borrow  from  the  Latin  or  any  other 
language  ;  but  when  I  want  at  home  I  must  seek  abroad. 
If  sounding  words  are  not  of  our  growth  and  manufac 
ture,  who  shall  hinder  me  to  import  them  from  a  foreign 
•  \  country?  I  carry  not  out  the  treasure  of  the  nation 
which  is  never  to  return  ;  but  what  I  bring  from  Italy  I 
spend  in  England :  here  it  remains,  and  here  it  circu 
lates  ;  for  if  the  coin  be  good,  it  will  pass  from  one  hand 
to  another.  I  trade  both  with  the  living  and  the  dead  ' 
for  the  enrichment  of  our  native  language.  We  have 
enough  in  England  to  supply  our  necessity  ;  but  if  we 
will  have  things  of  magnificence  and  splendor,  we  must 

get  them  by  commerce Therefore,  if  I  find  a  word 

in  a  classic  author,  I  propose  it  to  be  naturalized  by 


DRYDEN.  75 

using  it  myself,  and  if  the  public  approve  of  it  the  bill 
passes.  But  every  man  cannot  distinguish  betwixt 
pedantry  and  poetry ;  every  man,  therefore,  is  not  fit 
to  innovate."  *  This  is  admirably  said,  and  with  Dry- 
den's  .accustomed  penetration  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 
The  Latin  has  given  us  most  of  our  canorous  words,  only 
they  must  not  be  confounded  with  merely  sonorous  ones, 
still  less  with  phrases  that,  instead  of  supplementing  the 
sense,  encumber  it.  It  was  of  Latinizing  in  this  sense 
that  Dryden  was  guilty.  Instead  of  stabbing,  he  "  with 
steel  invades  the  life."  The  consequence  was  that  by 
and  by  we  have  Dr.  Johnson's  poet,  Savage,  telling  us,  — 

"  In  front,  a  parlor  meets  my  entering  view, 
Opposed  a  room  to  sweet  refection  due  " ; 

Dr.  Blacklock  making  a  forlorn  maiden  say  of  her  "  dear," 
who  is  out  late,  — 

"  Or  by  some  apoplectic  fit  deprest 
Perhaps,  alas !  lie  seeks  eternal  rest " ; 

and  Mr.  Bruce,  in  a  Danish  war-song,  calling  on  the  vi 
kings  to  "  assume  their  oars."  But  it  must  be  admitted 
of  Dryden  that  he  seldom  makes  the  second  verse  of  a 
couplet  the  mere  trainbearer  to  the  first,  as  Pope  was  | 
continually  doing.  In  Dryden  the  rhyme  waits  upon 
the  thought ;  in  Pope  and  his  school  the  thought  courte 
sies  to  the  tune  for  which  it  is  written.  ' 

Dryden  has  also  been  blamed  for  his  gallicisms.!     He  , 
tried  some,  it  is  true,  but  they  have  not  been  accepted,  j 

*  A  Discourse  of  Epick  Poetry.  "  If  the  public  approve."  "  On  ne 
peut  pas  admettre  dans  le  de'veloppement  des  langues  aucune  reVo- 
lution  artificielle  et  sciemment  execute'e ;  il  n'y  a  pour  elles  ni  concilep, 
ni  assemblies  deUiberantes;  on  ne  les  reTorme  pas  comme  une  consti 
tution  vicieuse."  — EENAN,  De  1' Origins  du  Langage,  p.  95. 

t  This  is  an  old  complaint.  Puttenham  sighs  over  such  innovation 
in  Elizabeth's  time,  and  Carew  in  James's.  A  language  grows,  and  is 
not  made.  Almost  all  the  new-fangled  words  with  which  Jonsou 
taxes  Marston  in  his  "  Poetaster"  are  now  current. 


76  DRYDEN. 

I  do  not  think  he  added  a  single  word  to  the  language, 
unless,  as  I  suspect,  he  first  usejl  magnetism  in  its  pres 
ent  sense  of  moral  attraction?)  What  he  did  in  his  best 
I  writing  was  to  use  the  English  as  if  it  were  a  spoken, 
and  not  merely  an  inkhorn  language ;  as  if  it  were  his 
own  to  do  what  he  pleased  with  it,  as  if  it  need  not  be 
ashamed  of  itself.*  In  this  respect,  his  service  to  our 
\  prose  wasj^eater_than  any  other  man  has  ever  rendered. 
He  says  he  formed  his  style  upon  Tillotson's  (Bossuet, 
on  the  other  hand,  formed  his  upon  Corneille's) ;  but  I 
{rather  think  he  got  it  at  Will's,  for  its  great  charm  is 
that  it  has  the  various  freedom  of  talk.f  In  verse,  he 
had  a  pomp  which,  excellent  in  itself,  became  pompous- 
ness  in  his  imitators.  But  he  had  nothing  of  Milton's 
ear  for  various  rhythm  and  interwoven  harmony.  He 
knew  how  to  give  new  modulation,  sweetness,  and  force 
to  the  pentameter ;  but  in  what  used  to  be  called  pm- 
darics,  I  am  heretic  enough  to  think  he  generally  failed.  ) 
His  so  much  praised  "  Alexander's  Feast "  (in  parts  of 
it,  at  least)  has  no  excuse  for  its  slovenly  metre  and 
awkward  expression,  but  that  it  was  written  for  music. 
He  himself  tells  us,  in  the  epistle  dedicatory  to  "  King 
Arthur,"  "  that  the  numbers  of  poetry  and  vocal  music 
are  sometimes  so  contrary,  that  in  many  places  I  have 
been  obliged  to  cramp  my  verses  and  make  them  rugged 

*  Like  most  idiomatic,  as  distinguished  from  correct  writers,  he 
knew  very  little  about  the  language  historically  or  critically.  His 
prose  and  poetry  swarm  with  locutions  that  would  have  made  Lindley 
Murray's  hair  stand  on  end.  How  little  he  knew  is  plain  from  his  criti 
cising  in  Ben  Jonson  the  use  of  ones  in  the  plural,  of  "  Though  Heaven 
should  speak  with  all  his  wrath,"  and  6e"as  false  English  for  are, 
though  the  rhyme  hides  it."  Yet  all  are  good  English,  and  I  have 
found  them  all  in  Dryden's  own  writing!  Of  his  sins  against  idiom  I 
have  a  longer  list  than  I  have  room  for.  And  yet  he  is  one  of  our 
highest  authorities  for  reed  English. 

t  To  see  what  he  rescued  us  from  in  pedantry  on  the  one  hand,  and 
vulgarism  on  the  other,  read  Feltham  and  Tom  Brown  —  if  you  can. 


DKYDEN.  77 

to  the  reader  that  they  may  be  harmonious  to  the 
hearer."  His  renowned  ode  suffered  from  this  constraint, 
but  this  is  no  apology  for  the  vulgarity  of  conception  in 
too  many  passages.* 

Dryden's  conversion  to  Romanism  has  been  commonly 
taken  for  granted  as  insincere,  and  has  therefore  left  an 
abiding  stain  on  his  character,  though  the  other  mud 
thrown  at  him  by  angry  opponents  or  rivals  brushed  off 
so  soon  as  it  was  dry.  But  I  think  his  change  of  faith 
susceptible  of  several  explanations,  none  of  them  in  any 
way  discreditable  to  him.  Where  Church  and  State  are 
habitually  associated,  it  is  natural  that  minds  even  of  a 
high  order  should  unconsciously  come  to  regard  religion 
as  only  a  subtler  mode  of  police,  f  Dry  den,  conservative 
by  nature,  had  discovered  before  Joseph  de  Maistre,  that 
Protestantism,  so  long  as  it  justified  its  name  by  con 
tinuing  to  be  an  active  principle,  was  the  abettor  of  Re 
publicanism.  I  think  this  is  hinted  in  more  than  one 
passage  in  his  preface  to  "  The  Hind  and  Panther." 
He  may  very  well  have  preferred  Romanism  because  of 
its  elder  claim  to  authority  in  all  matters  of  doctrine, 
but  I  think  he  had  a  deeper  reason  in  the  constitution 
of  his  own  mind.  That  he  was  "  naturally  inclined  to 
scepticism  in  philosophy,"  he  tells  us  of  himself  in  the 
preface  to  the  "  Religio  Laici " ;  but  he  was  a  sceptic 

*  "  Cctte  ode  mise  en  musique  par  Purcell  (si  je  ne  me  trompe), 
passe  en  Angleterre  pour  le  chef-d'osuvre  de  la  poesie  la  plus  sublime 
et  la  plus  variee;  etje  vous  avoue  que,  comme  je  sais  mieiix  1'anglais 
que  le  grec,  j'aime  cent  fois  mieux  cette  ode  que  tout  Pindare."  — 
VOLTAIRE  to  M.  DE  CHABANON,  9  mars,  1772. 

Dryden  would  have  agreed  with  Voltaire.  When  Chief-Justice  Mar- 
lay,  then  a  young  Templar,  "  congratulated  him  on  having  produced 
the  finest  and  noblest  Ode  that  had  ever  been  written  in  any  language, 
'  You  are  right,  young  gentleman '  (replied  Dryden),  '  a  nobler  Ode 
never  was  produced,  nor  ever  will:  "  —  MALONE. 

I  This  was  true  of  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  still  more  of  Soutliey, 
who  in  some  respects  was  not  unlike  Dryden. 


78  DKYDEN. 

with  an  imaginative  side,  and  in  such  characters  scepti 
cism  and  superstition  play  into  each  other's  hands.  This 
finds  a  curious  illustration  in  a  letter  to  his  sons,  written 
four  years  before  his  death  :  "  Towards  the  latter  end  of 
this  month,  September,  Charles  will  begin  to  recover  his 
perfect  health,  according  to  his  Nativity,  which,  casting 
it  myself,  I  am  sure  is  true,  and  all  things  hitherto  hava 
happened  accordingly  to  the  very  time  that  I  predicted 
them."  Have  we  forgotten  Montaigne's  votive  offerings 
at  the  shrine  of  Loreto  1  ) 

Dryden  was  short  of  body,  inclined  to  stoutness,  and 
florid  of  complexion.  He  is  said  to  have  had  ".a  sleepy 
eye,"  but  was  handsome  and  of  a  manly  carriage.  He 
"was  not  a  very  genteel  man,  he  was  intimate  with 
none  but  poetical  men.*  He  was  said  to  be  a  very  good 
man  by  all  that  knew  him :  he  was  as  plump  as  Mr. 
Pitt,  of  a  fresh  color  and  a  down  look,  and  not  very 
conversible."  So  Pope  described  him  to  Spence.  He 
still  reigns  in  literary  tradition,  as  when  at  Will's  his 
elbow-chair  had  the  best  place  by  the  fire  in  winter,  or 
on  the  balcony  in  summer,  and  when  a  pinch  from  his 
snuff-box  made  a  young  author  blush  with  pleasure  as 
would  now-a-days  a  favorable  notice  in  the  "Saturday 
Review."  What  gave  and  secures  for  him  this  singular 
eminence  1  To  put  it  in  a  single  word,  I  think  that  his 
qualities  and  faculties  were  in  that  rare  combination 
which  makes  character.  This  gave  flavor  to  whatever 
,  he  wroto,  —  a  very  rare  quality. 
./  1  Was  he,  then,  a  great  poet  ?  Hardly,  in  the  narrow- 

*  Pope's  notion  of  gentility  was  perhaps  expressed  in  a  letter  from 
Lord  Cobham  to  him  :  "  I  congratulate  you  upon  the  fine  weather. 
'T  is  a  strange  thing  that  people  of  condition  and  men  of  parts  must 
enjoy  it  in  common  with  the  rest  of  the  world."  (Ruffhead's  Pope, 
p.  276,  note.)  His  Lordship's  naive  distinction  between  people  of  con 
dition  and  men  of  parts  is  as  good  as  Pope's  between  genteel  and  po 
etical  men.  I  fancy  the  poet  grinning  savagely  as  he  read  it. 


DRYDEN.  79 

est  definition.  But  he  was  a  strong  thinker  who  some 
times  carried  common  sense  to  a  height  where  it  catches 
the  light  of  a  diviner  air,  and  warmed  reason  till  it  had 
wellnigh  the  illuminating  property  of  intuition.  Cer 
tainly  he  is  not,  like  Spenser,  the  poets'  poet,  but  other 
men  have  also  their  rights.  \Even  the  Philistine  is  a 
man  and  a  brother,  and  is  entirely  right  so  far  as  he 
sees.  To  demand  more  of  him  is  to  be  unreasonable. 
(  And  he  sees,  among  other  things,  that  a  man  who  under 
takes  to  write_should  first  have  a  meaning  perfectly  de 
fined  to  himself,  and  then  should  be  able  to  set  it  forth 
clearly  in  the  best  words.  This  is  precisely  Dryden's 
praise,*  and /amid  the  rickety  sentiment  looming  big- 
through  misty  phrase  which  marks  so  much  of  modern  v 
literature,  to  read  him  is  as  bracing  as  a  northwest  wind. 
TTfl  Klowft  f.hp.jm'r^d  o]^fj_  In  ripeness  of  mind  and  bluff' 
heartiness  of  expression,  he  takes  rank  with  the  best. 
His  phrase  is  always  a  short-cut  to  his  sense,  for  his  es 
tate  was  too  spacious  for  him  to  need  that  trick  of  wind 
ing  the  path  of  his  thought  about,  and  planting  it  out 
with  clumps  of  epithet,  by  which  the  landscape-gar 
deners  of  literature  give  to  a  paltry  half-acre  the  air  of  a 
park.  In  poetry,  to  be  next-best  is,  in  one  sense,  to  be 
nothing  ;  and  yet  to  be  among  the  first  in  any  kind  of 
writing,  as  Dryden  certainly  was,  is  to  be  one  of  a  very 
small  company.  '  He  had,  beyond  most,  the  gift  of  the 
right  word.  ^And  if  he  does  not,  like  one  or  two  of  the 
greater  masters  of  song,  stir  our  sympathies  by  that  in 
definable  aroma  so  magical  in  arousing  the  subtile  asso 
ciations  of  the  soul,  he  has  this  in  common  with  the 
few  great  writers,  that  the  winged  seeds  of  his  thought 
embed  themselves  in  the  memory  and  germinate  there. 
If  I  could  be  guilty  of  the  absurdity  of  recommending 

*  "  Nothing  is  truly  sublime,"  he  himself  saidj  "  that  is  not  just  and 
pi-oper." 


80  DRYDEN. 

to  a  young  man  any  author  on  whom  to  form  his  style, 
I  should  tell  him  that,  next  to  having  something  that ' 
will    not  stay  unsaid,  he  could  find  no  safer  guide  than 
Dryden. 

Cowper,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Unwin  (5th  January,  1 782), 
expresses  what  I  think  is  the  common  feeling  about 
Dryden,  that,  with  all  his  defects,  he  had  that  indefina 
ble  something  we  call  Genius.  "  But  I  admire  Dryden 
most  [he  had  been  speaking  of  Pope],  who  has^  succeeded 
by  mere  dint  of  genius,  and  in  spite  of  a  laziness  and  a 
carelessness  almost  peculiar  to  himself.  His  faults  are 
numberless,  and  so  are  his  beauties.  His  faults  are  those 
of  a  great  man,  and  his  beauties  are  such  (at  least 
sometimes)  as  Pope  with  all  his  touching  and  retouching 
could  never  equal."  But,  after  all,  perhaps  no  man  has 
summed  him  up  so  well  as  John  Dennis,  one  of  Pope's 
typical  dunces,  a  dull  man  outside  of  his  own  sphere, 
as  men  are  apt  to  be,  but  who  had  some  sound  notions 
as  a  critic,  and  thus  became  the  object  of  Pope's  fear 
and  therefore  of  his  resentment.  Dennis  speaks  of  him 
as  his  "departed  friend,  whom  I  infinitely  esteemed 
when  living  for  the  solidity  of  his  thought,  for  the  spring 
and  the  warmth  and  the  beautiful  turn  of  it ;  for  the 
power  and  variety  and  fulness  of  his  harmony  ;  for  the 
purity,  the  perspicuity,  the  energy  of  his  expression  ; 
and,  whenever  these  great  qualities  are  required,  for  the 
pomp  and  solemnity  and  majesty  of  his  style."  * 

*  Dennis  in  a  letter  to  Tonson,  1715. 


WITCHCRAFT 


CREDULITY,  as  a  mental  and  moral  phenomenon,  mani 
fests  itself  in  widely  different  ways,  according  as  it 
chances  to  be  the  daughter  of  fancy  or  terror.  The  one 
lies  warm  about  the  heart  as  Folk-lore,  fills  moonlit  dells1 

*  Salem  Witchcraft,  with  an  Account  of  Salem  Village,  and  a  His 
tory  of  Opinions  on  Witchcraft  and  Kindred  Subjects.  By  CHARLES 
W.  UPHAM.  Boston :  Wiggin  and  Lunt.  1867.  2  vols. 

IOANNIS  WIERI  de  praestigiis  daemonum,  et  incantationibus  ac  vene- 
ficiis  libri  sex,  postrema  editione  sexta  aucti  et  recogniti.  Accessit 
liber  apologeticus  et  pseudomonarchia  daemonum.  Cum  rerum  et  ver- 
boram  copioso  indice.  Cum  Caes.  Maiest.  Kegisq;  Galliarum  gratia 
et  privelegio.  Basilias  ex  officina  Oporiniani,  1583. 

SCOT'S  Discovery  of  Witchcraft:  proving  the  common  opinions  of 
Witches  contracting  with  Divels,  Spirits,  or  Familiars ;  and  their  power 
to  kill,  torment,  and  consume  the  bodies  of  men,  women,  and  children, 
or  other  creatures  by  diseases  or  otherwise ;  their  flying  in  the  Air,  &c. ; 
To  be  but  imaginary  Erronious  conceptions  and  novelties ;  Wherein 
also  the  lewde,  unchristian  practises  of  Witchmongers,  upon  aged, 
melancholy,  ignorant  and  superstitious  people  in  extorting  confessions 
by  inhumane  terrors  and  Tortures,  is  notably  detected.  Also  The  knav 
ery  and  confederacy  of  Conjurors.  The  impious  blasphemy  of  In- 
chanters.  The  imposture  of  Soothsayers,  and  infidelity  of  Atheists. 
The  delusion  of  Pythonists,  Figure-casters,  Astrologers,  and  vanity  of 
Dreamers.  The  fruitlesse  beggarly  art  of  Alchimistry.  The  horrible 
art  of  Poisoning  and  all  the  tricks  and  conveyances  of  juggling  and  lieger- 
demain  are  fully  deciphered.  With  many  other  things  opened  that 
have  long  lain  hidden :  though  very  necessary  to  be  known  for  the  un 
deceiving  of  Judges,  Justices,  and  Juries,  and  for  the  preservation  of 
poor,  aged,  deformed,  ignorant  people;  frequently  taken,  arraigned, 
condemned  and  executed  for  Witches,  when  according  to  a  right  un 
derstanding,  and  a  good  conscience,  Physick,  Food,  and  necessaries 
4*  F 


82  WITCHCRAFT. 

with  dancing  fairies,  sets  out  a  meal  for  the  Brownie, 
hears  the  tinkle  of  airy  bridle-bells  as  Tamlane  rides 
away  with  the  Queen  of  Dreams,  changes  Pluto  and 

should  be  administered  to  him.  Whereunto  is  added  a  treatise  upon 
the  nature  and  substance  of  Spirits  and  Divels  &c.,  all  written  and 
published  in  Anno  1584.  By  REGINALD  SCOT,  Esquire.  Printed  by 
R.  C.  and  are  to  be  sold  by  Giles  Calvert  dwelling  at  the  Black  Spread- 
Eagle,  at  the  West-End  of  Pauls,  1651. 

De  la  Demonomanie  des  Sorciers.  A  MONSEIGNEUR  M.  CHKESTOFE 
PE  THOU,  Chevalier,  Seigneur  d*  Cceli,  premier  President  en  la  Cour 
de  Parlement  et  Conseiller  du  Roy  en  son  prive*  Conseil.  Reveu, 
Corrige,  et  augmente  d'une  grande  partie.  Par  I.  BODIN  ANGEVIN. 
A  Paris :  Chez  Jacques  Du  Puys,  Libraire  lure",  a  la  Samaritaine. 
M.D.LXXXVII.  Avec  privilege  du  Roy. 

Magica,  seu  mirabilium  historiarum  de  Spectris  et  Apparition ibus 
spirituum:  Item,  de  magicis  et  diabolicis  incantationibus.  De  Mira- 
culis,  Oraculis,  Vaticiuiis,  Divinationibus,  Prredictionibus,  Revelatio- 
nibus  et  aliis  eiusmodi  multis  ac  varijs  prasstigijs,  ludibrijs  et  imposturis 
malorum  Dajmonum.  Libri  II.  Ex  probatis  et  fide  dignis  historiarum 
scriptoribus  diligenter  collecti.  Islebiaj,  cura,  Typis  et  sumptibus 
Henningi  Grossij  Bibl.  Lipo.  1597.  Cum  privilegio. 

The  displaying  of  supposed  Witchcraft  wherein  is  affirmed  that  there 
are  many  sorts  of  Deceivers  and  Impostors,  and  divers  persons  under  a 
passive  delusion  of  Melancholy  and  Fancy.  But  that  there  is  a  cor 
poreal  league  made  betwixt  the  Devil  and  the  Witch,  or  that  he  sucks 
on  the  Witch's  body,  has  carnal  copulation,  or  that  Witches  are  turned 
into  Cats,  Dogs,  raise  Tempests  or  the  like  is  utterly  denied  and  dis 
proved.  Wherein  is  also  handled,  The  existence  of  Angels  and  Spirits, 
the  truth  of  Apparitions,  the  Nature  of  Astral  and  Sydereal  Spirits,  the 
force  of  Charms  and  Philters ;  with  other  abstruse  matters.  By  JOHN 
WEBSTEK,  Practitioner  in  Physick.  Falsa  etenim  opiniones  Homimun 
non  solum  surdos  sed  et  coecos  faciunt,  ita  ut  videre  nequeant  quas 
aliis  perspicua  apparent.  Galen,  lib.  8,  de  Comp.  Med.  London: 
Printed  by  I.  M.  and  are  to  be  sold  by  the  booksellers  in  London. 
1677. 

Sadducismus  Triumphatus:  or  Full  and  Plain  Evidence  concerning 
Witches  and  Apparitions.  In  two  Parts.  The  First  treating  of  their 
Possibility,-  the  Second  of  their  Real  Existence.  By  JOSEPH  GLAN- 
VIL,  late  Chaplain  in  Ordinary  to  His  Majesty,  and  Fellow  of  the  Roy 
al  Society.  The  third  edition.  The  advantages  whereof  above  the 
former,  the  Reader  may  understand  out  of  Dr  H.  More's  Account  pre 
fixed  tlierunto.  With  two  Authentick,  but  wonderful  Stories  of  cer 
tain  Swedish  Witches.  Done  into  English  by  A.  HORNECK  DD.  Lon 
don,  Printed  for  S.  L.  and  are  to  be  sold  by  Anth.  Baskerville  at  the 
Bible,  the  corner  of  Essex-street,  without  Temple-Bar.  M.DCLXXXIX. 


'-•     r  HE  N\ 

UNIVERSITY    | 


DF, 

WITCHCRAFT.  83 

Proserpine  into  Obcron  and  Titania,  and  makes  friSnds 
with  unseen  powers  as  Good  Folk  ;  the  other 


of  night,  whose  shadow  sends  a  chill  among  the  roots 

Demonologie  ou  Traitte  des  Demons  et  Sorciers :  De  leur  puissance 
et  impuissance:  Par  FR.  PERRAUD.  Ensemble  L'Antidemon  de 
Mascon,  ou  Histoire  Veritable  do  ce  qu'un  Demon  a  fait  et  dit,  il  y  a 
quelques  annees  en  la  maison  dudit  Sr  Perreaud  a  Mascon.  I. 
Jacques  iv.  7,  8.  "  Resistez  an  Diable,  et  il  s'enfuira  de  vous.  Ap- 
prochez  vous  de  Dieu,  et  il  s'approchera  de  vous."  A  Geneve,  cliez 
Pierre  Aubert.  M,DC,LIII.  * 

The  Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World.  Being  an  account  of  the  trv- 
als  of  several  witches  lately  executed  in  New-England.  By  COTTON 
MATHER,  D.  D.  To  which  is  added  a  farther  account  of  the  tryals  of 
the  New  England  Witches.  By  INCREASE  MATHER,  D.  D.,  President  of 
Harvard  College.  London :  John  Russell  Smith,  Soho  Square.  1862. 
(First  printed  in  Boston,  1692.) 

I.  N.  D.  N.  J.  C.  Dissertatio  Juridica  de  Lamiis  earumque  processu 
criminali,  ^Boit  -frefen  unt>  t>em  peini.  $>VC)3e£  ttifcer  Mefelben,  Quarn, 
nuxiliante  Divina  Gratia,  Consensu  et  Authoritate  Magnifici  JCtorum 
Ordinis  in  illustribus  Athenis  Salanis  sub  praasidio  Magnifici,  Nobilis- 
simi,  Amplissimi,  Consultissimi,  atque  Excellentissimi  DN.  ERNESTI 
FKIDER.  @ct;voter  hereditarii  in  2Bttf«t$bt,  JCti  et  Antecessoris  hujus 
Salanae  Famigeratissimi,  Consiliarii  Saxonici,  Curiae  Provincialis,  Fa- 
-  cultatis  Juridicse,  et  Scabinatus  Assessoris  longe  Gravissimi,  Domini 
Patroni  Prseceptoris  et  Promotoris  sui  nullo  non  honoris  et  observantiaj 
c-ultu  sancte  devenerandi,colendi,  publics  Eruditorum  censuras  subjicit 
Micliael  Paris  '•JBalbttr^r,  Grcebzigfi  Anhaltinus,  in  Acroaterio  JCtorum 
ad  diem  1.  Maj.  A.  1670.  Editio  Tertia.  Jense,  TypisPauliEhrichii. 
1707. 

Histoire  de  Diables  de  Lou  dun,  ou  de  la  Possession  des  Religieuses 
1'rsulines,  etde  la  condemnation  et  dusuplice  d'Urbain  Grandier,  Cure" 
de  la  rneme  ville.  Cruels  effets  de  la  Vengeance  du  Cardinal  de  Riche 
lieu.  A  Amsterdam  Aux  depens  de  la  Compngnie.  M.DCC.LII. 

A  view  of  the  Invisible  World,  or  General  History  of  Apparitions. 
Collected  from  the  best  Authorities,  both  Antient  and  Modern,  and  at 
tested  by  Authors  of  the  highest  Reputation. and  Credit.  Illustrated 
with  a  Variety  of  Notes  and  parallel  Cases;  in  which  some  Account 
of  the  Nature  and  Cause  of  Departed  Spirits  visiting  their  former  Sta 
tions  by  returning  again  into  the  present  World,  is  treated  in  a  Manner 
different  to  the  prevailing  Opinions  of  Mankind.  And  an  Attempt  is 
made  from  Rational  Principles  to  account  for  the  Species  of  such  su 
pernatural  Appearances,  when  they  may  be  suppos'd  consistent  with 
the  Divine  Appointment  in  the  Government  of  the  World.  With  the 
sentiments  of  Monsieur  LE  CI.ERC,  Mr.  LOCKE,  Mr.  ADDISON,  and 
Others  on  this  important  Subject.  In  which  some  humorous  and  di- 


84  WITCHCRAFT. 

of  ihe  hair  :  it  sucks  with  the  vampire,  gorges  with  the 
ghoule,  is  choked  by  the  night-hag,  pines  away  under  the 
witch's  charm,  and  commits  uncleanness  with  the  em 
bodied  Principle  of  Evil,  giving  up  the  fair  realm  of 
innocent  belief  to  a  murky  throng  from  the  slums  and 
stews  of  the  debauched  brain.J  Both  have  vanished  from 
among  educated  men,  and  £uch  superstition  as  comes  to 
the  surface  now-a-days  is  the  harmless  Jacobitism  of  senti 
ment,  pleasing  itself  with  the  fiction  all  the  more  be 
cause  there  is  no  exacting  reality  behind  it  to  impose  a 
duty  or  demand  a  sacrifice.  And  as  Jacobitism  survived 
the  Stuarts,  so  this  has  outlived  the  dynasty  to  which  it 
professes  an  after-dinner  allegiance.  It  nails  a  horseshoe 
over  the  door,  but  keeps  a  rattle  by  its  bedside  to  sum 
mon  a  more  substantial  watchman  ;  it  hangs  a  crape  on 
the  beehives  to  get  a  taste  of  ideal  sweetness,  but  obeys 
the  teaching  of  the  latest  bee-book  for  material  and 
marketable  honey.  This  is  the  sesthetic  variety  of  the 
malady,  or  rather,  perhaps,  it  is  only  the  old  complaint 
robbed  of  all  its  pain,  and  lapped  in  waking  dreams  by 

verting  instances  are  remark'd,  in  order  to  divert  that  Gloom  of  Melan 
choly  that  naturally  arises  in  the  Human  Mind,  from  reading  or  medi 
tating  on  such  Subjects.  Illustrated  with  suitable  Cuts.  London: 
Printed  in  the  year  M,DCC,LII.  [Mainly  from  DeFoe's  "  History  of 
Apparitions."] 

Satan's  Invisible  World  discovered;  or,  a  choice  Collection  of  Mod 
ern  Relations,  proving  evidently,  against  the  Atheists  of  this  present 
Age,  that  there  are  Devils,  Spirits,  Witches  and  Apparitions,  from 
Authentic  Records,  Attestations  of  Witnesses,  and  undoubted  Verity. 
To  which  is  added  that  marvellous  History  of  Major  Weir  and  his  Sis 
ter,  the  Witches  of  Balgarran,  Pittenweem  and  Calder,  &c.  By  GEOKGE 
SINCLAIR,  late  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Glasgow.  No  man  should 
be  vain  that  he  can  injure  the  merit  of  a  Book;  for  the  meanest  rogue 
may  burn  a,  City  or  kill  a  Hero ;  whereas  he  could  never  build  the  one, 
or  equal  the  other.  Sir  George  M'Kenzie,  Edinburgh:  Sold  by  P. 
Anderson,  Parliament  Square.  M.DCC.LXXX. 

La  Magie  et  1'Astrologie  dans  1'Antiquite'  et  au  Moyen  Age,  ou 
Etude  sur  les  superstitions  paiennes  qui  se  sont  perpe'tue'es  jusqu'a  nos 
jours.  Par  L.  F.  ALFRED  MAURY.  Troisieme  Edition  revue  et 
corrigee.  Paris:  Didier.  1864. 


WITCHCRAFT.  85 

the  narcotism  of  an  age  of  science.  To  the  world  at 
large  it  is  not  undelightful  to  see  the  poetical  instincts 
of  friends  and  neighbors  finding  some  other  vent  than 
that  of  verse.  But  there  "has  been  a  superstition  of  very 
different  fibre,  of  more  intense  and  practical  validity,  the 
deformed  child  of  faith,  peopling  the  midnight  of  the 
mind  with  fearful  shapes  and  phrenetic  suggestions,  a 
monstrous  brood  of  its  own  begetting,  and  making  even 
good  men  ferocious  in  imagined  self-defence. 

Imagination,  has  always  been,  and  still  is,  in  a  nap 
rower  sense,  the  great  mythologizer;  but  both  its  mode  of 
manifestation  and  the  force  with  which  it  reacts  on  tho 
mind  are  one  thing  in  its  crude  form  of  childlike  wonder, 
and  another  thing  after  it  has  been  more  or  less  con 
sciously  manipulated  by  the  poetic  faculty.  A  mythol 
ogy  that  broods  over  us  in  our  cradles,  that  mingles  with 
the  lullaby  of  the  nurse  and  the  winter-evening  legends 
of  the  chimney-corner,  that  brightens  day  with  the  pos 
sibility  of  divine  encounters,  and  darkens  night  with  in 
timations  of  demonic  ambushes,  is  of  other  substance 
than  one  which  we  take  down  from  our  bookcase,  sapless 
as  the  shelf  it  stood  on,  and  remote  from  all  present 
sympathy  with  man  or  nature  as  a  town  history.  It  is 
something  like  the  difference  between  live  metaphor  and 
dead  personification.  Primarily,  the  action  of  the  im 
agination  is  the  same  in  the  mythologizer  and  the  poet, 
that  is,  it  forces  its  own  consciousness  on  the  objects  of 
the  senses,  and  compels  them  to  sympathize  with  its  own 
momentary  impressions.  When  Shakespeare  in  his  "  Lu- 
crece  "  makes 

"  The  threshold  grate  the  door  to  have  him  heard," 
his  mind  is  acting  under  the  same  impulse  that  first  en 
dowed  with  human  feeling  and  then  with  human  shape 
all  th.e  invisible  forces  of  nature,  and  called  into  being 
those 


6  WITCHCRAFT. 

"  Fair  humanities  of  old  religion," 

whose  loss  the  poets  mourn.     So  also  Shakespeare  no 
doubt  projected  himself  in  his  own  creations  ;  but  those 
creations   never   became    so  perfectly  disengaged   from 
him,  so  objective,  or,  as  they  used  to  say,  extrinsical,  to 
him,  as  to  react  upon  him  like  real  and  even  alien  exist 
ences.     I  mean  permanently,  for  momentarily  they  may 
and  must  have  done  so.     But  before  man's  conscious 
ness  had  wholly  disentangled   itself  from  outward  ob 
jects,  all  nature  was  but  a  many-sided   mirror   which 
gave  back  to  him  a  thousand  images  more  or  less  beau 
tified  or  distorted,  magnified  or  diminished,  of  himself, 
his  imagination  grew  to  look  upon  its  own  incorpo 
rations   as  having   an    independent   being.     Thus,    by 
degrees,  it  became  at  last  passive  to  its  own  creations. 
You  may  see  imaginative  children  every  day  anthropo 
morphizing  in  this  way,  and  the  dupes  of  that  super 
abundant  vitality  in  themselves,  which  bestows  qualities 
proper  to  itself  on  everything  about  them.     There  is  a 
period  of  development  in  which  grown  men  are   child 
like.     In  such  a  period  the  fables  which  endow  beasts 
with  human  attributes  first  grew  up ;  and  we  luckily 
read  them  so  early  as  never  to  become  suspicious  of  any 
absurdity  in  them.     The  Finnic  epos  of  "  Kalewala  "  is 
a  curious  illustration  of  the  same  fact.     In  that  every 
thing  has  the  affections,   passions,  and  consciousness  of 
men.     When  the  mother  of  Lemminkainen  is  seeking 
her  lost  son,  — 

"  Sought  she  many  days  the  lost  one, 
Sought  him  ever  without  finding; 
Then  the  roadways  come  to  meet  her, 
And  she  asks  them  with  beseeching: 
*  Roadways,  ye  whom  God  hath  shapen, 
Have  ye  not  my  son  beholden, 
Nowhere  seen  the  golden  apple, 
Him,  my  darling  staff  of  silver?  ' 


WITCHCRAFT.  87 

Prudently  they  gave  her  answer, 
Thus  to  her  replied  the  roadways : 
*  For  thy  son  we  cannot  plague  us, 
We  have  sorrows  too,  a  many, 
Since  our  own  lot  is  a  hard  one 
And  our  fortune  is  but  evil, 
By  dog's  feet  to  be  run  over, 
By  the  wheel-tire  to  be  wounded, 
And  by  heavy  heels  down-trampled.' " 

It  is  in  this  tendency  of  the  mind  under  certain  con 
ditions  to  confound  the  objective  with  subjective,  or 
rather  to  mistake  the  one  for  the  other,  that  Mr.  Tylor, 
in  his  "  Early  History  of  Mankind,"  is  fain  to  seek  the 
origin  of  the  supernatural,  as  we  somewhat  vaguely 
call  whatever  transcends  our  ordinary  experience.  And 
this,  no  doubt,  will  in  many  cases  account  for  the  par 
ticular  shapes  assumed  by  certain  phantasmal  appear 
ances,  though  I  am  inclined  to  doubt  whether  it  be  a 
sufficient  explanation  of  the  abstract  phenomenon.  It 
is  easy  for  the  arithmetician  to  make  a  key  to  the  prob 
lems  that  he  has  devised  to  suit  himself.  An  imme 
diate  and  habitual  confusion  of  the  kind  spoken  of  is 
insanity ;  and  the  hypochondriac  is  tracked  by  the  black 
dog  of  his  own  mind.  Disease  itself  is,  of  course,  in 
one  sense  natural,  as  being  the  result,  of  natural  causes  ; 
but  if  we  assume  health  as  the  mean  representing  the 
normal  poise  of  all  the  mental  faculties,  we  must  be 
content  to  call  hypochondria  subternatural,  because  the 
tone  of  the  instrument  is  lowered,  and  to  designate  as 
supernatural  only  those  ecstasies  in  which  the  mind, 
under  intense  but  not  unhealthy  excitement,  is  snatched 
sometimes  above  itself,  as  in  poets  and  other  persons  of 
imaginative  temperament.  In  poets  this  liability  to  be 
possessed  by  the  creations  of  their  own  brains  is  limited 
and  proportioned  by  the  artistic  sense,  and  the  imagina 
tion  thus  truly  becomes  the  shaping  faculty,  while  in 
less  regulated  or  coarser  organizations  it  dwells  forever 


88  WITCHCRAFT. 

in  the  Nifelheim  of  phantasmagoria  and  dream,  a  thau 
maturge  half  cheat,  half  dupe.  What  Mr.  Tylor  has 
to  say  on  this  matter  is  ingenious  and  full  of  valuable 
suggestion,  and  to  a  certain  extent  solves  our  difficulties. 
Nightmare,  for  example,  will  explain  the  testimony  of 
witnesses  in  trials  for  witchcraft,  that  they  had  been 
hag-ridden  by  the  accused.  But  to  prove  the  possibility, 
nay,  the  probability,  of  this  confusion  of  objective  with 
subjective  is  not  enough.  It  accounts  very  well  for 
such  apparitions  as  those  which  appeared  to  Dion,  to 
Brutus,  and  to  Curtius  Eufus.  In  such  cases  the  im 
agination  is  undoubtedly  its  own  doppel-ganger,  and 
sees  nothing  more  than  the  projection  of  its  own  deceit. 
But  I  am  puzzled,  I  confess,  to  explain  the  appearance 
of  the  first  ghost,  especially  among  men  who  thought 
death  to  be  the  end-all  here  below.  The  thing  once 
conceived  of,  it  is  easy,  on  Mr.  Tylor's  theory,  to  ac 
count  for  all  after  the  first.  If  it  was  originally  believed 
that  only  the  spirits  of  those  who  had  died  violent 
deaths  were  permitted  to  wander,  *  the  conscience  of  a 
remorseful  murderer  may  have  been  haunted  by  the 
memory  of  his  victim,  till  the  imagination,  infected  in 
its  turn,  gave  outward  reality  to  the  image  on  the  in 
ward  eye.  After  putting  to  death  Boetius  and  Sym- 
machuSj  it  is  said  that  Theodoric  saw  in  the  head  of  a 

*  Lucian,  in  his  "  Liars,"  puts  this  opinion  into  the  mouth  of  Arig- 
notus.  -.  The  theory  by  which  Lucretius  seeks  to  explain  apparitions, 
though  materialistic,  seems  to  allow  some  influence  also  to  the  work 
ing  of  imagination.  It  is  hard  otherwise  to  explain  how  his  simulacra 
(which  are  not  unlike  the  astral  spirits  of  later  times)  should  appear  in 
dreams. 

Quae  simulacra  .... 
....  nobis  vigilantibus  obvia  mentes 
terrificant  atque  in  somnis,  cum  saepe  figuras 
'contuimur  miras  simulacraque  luce  carentum 
quae  nos  horrifice  languentis  saepe  sopore 
excierunt. 

De  Her.  Nat.  IV.  33  -  37,  cd.  Muiiro. 


WITCHCRAFT.  89 

fish  served  at  his  dinner  the  face  of  Symmachus,  grin 
ning  horribly  and  with  flaming  eyes,  whereupon  he 
took  to  his  bed  and  died  soon  after  in  great  agony  of 
mind.  It  is  not  safe,  perhaps,  to  believe  all  that  is  re 
ported  of  an  Arian  ;  but  supposing  the  story  to  be  true, 
there  is  only  a  short  step  from  such  a  delusion  of  the 
senses  to  the  complete  ghost  of  popular  legend.  But, 
in  some  of  the  most  trustworthy  stories  of  apparitions, 
they  have  shown  themselves  not  only  to  persons  who 
had  done  them  no  wrong  in  the  flesh,  but  also  to  such 
as  had  never  even  known  them.  The  eidolon  of  James 
Haddock  appeared  to  a  man  named  Taverner,  that  he 
might  interest  himself  in  recovering  a  piece  of  land  un 
justly  kept  from  the  dead  man's  infant  son.  If  we  may 
trust  Defoe,  Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor  twice  examined 
Taverner,  and  was  convinced  of  the  truth  of  his  story. 
In  this  case,  Taverner  had  formerly  known  Haddock. 
But  the  apparition  of  an  old  gentleman  which  entered 
the  learned  Dr.  Scott's  study,  and  directed  him  where 
to  find  a  missing  deed  needful  in  settling  what  had  late 
ly  been  its  estate  in  the  West  of  England,  chose  for  its 
attorney  in  the  business  an  entire  stranger,  who  had 
never  even  seen  its  original  in  the  flesh. 

Whatever  its  origin,  a  belief  in  spirits  seems  to  have 
been  common  to  all  the  nations  of  the  ancient  world 
who  have  left  us  any  record  of  themselves.  Ghosts  be 
gan  to  walk  early,  and  are  walking  still,  in  spite  of  the 
shrill  cock-crow  of  wir  habenja  aufgeklart.  Even  the 
ghost  in  chains,  which  one  would  naturally  take  to  be  a 
fashion  peculiar  to  convicts  escaped  from  purgatory,  is 
older  than  the  belief  in  that  reforming  penitentiary. 
The  younger  Pliny  tells  a  very  good  story  to  this  effect : 
"  There  was  at  Athens  a  large  and  spacious  house  which 
lay  under  the  disrepute  of  being  haunted.  In  the  dead 
of  the  night  a  noise  resembling  the  clashing  of  iron 


90  WITCHCRAFT. 

was  frequently  beared,  which,  if  you  listened  more  atten 
tively,  sounded  like  the  rattling  of  chains ;  at  first  it 
seemed  at  a  distance,  but  approached  nearer  by  degrees ; 
immediately  afterward  a  spectre  appeared,  in  the  form 
of  an  old  man,  extremely  meagre  and  ghastly,  with  a 
long  beard  and  dishevelled  hair,  rattling  the  chains  on 

his  feet   and  hands By  this  means  the  house 

was  at  last  deserted,  being  judged  by  everybody  to  be 
absolutely  uninhabitable ;  so  that  it  was  now  entirely 
abandoned  to  the  ghost.  However,  in  hopes  that  some 
tenant  might  be  found  who  was  ignorant  of  this  great 
calamity  which  attended  it,  a  bill  was  put  up  giving 
notice  that  it  was  either  to  be  let  or  sold.  It  happened 
that  the  philosopher  Athenodorus  came  to  Athens  at 
this  time,  and,  reading  the  bill,  inquired  the  price.  The 
extraordinary  cheapness  raised  his  suspicion ;  neverthe 
less,  when  he  beared  the  whole  story,  he  was  so  far  from 
being  discouraged  that  he  was  more  strongly  inclined  to 
hire  it,  and,  in  short,  actually  did  so.  When  it  grew  to 
wards  evening,  he  ordered  a  couch  to  be  prepared  for 
him  in  the  fore  part  of  the  house,  and,  after  calling  for 
a  light,  together  with  his  pen  and  tablets,  he  directed 
all  his  people  to  retire.  But  that  his  mind  might  not, 
for  want  of  employment,  be  open  to  the  vain  terrors  of 
imaginary  noises  and  spirits,  he  applied  himself  to 
writing  with  the  utmost  attention.  The  first  part  of 
the  night  passed  with  usual  silence,  when  at  length 
the  chains  began  to  rattle  ;  however,  he  neither  lifted  up 
his  eyes  nor  laid  down  his  pen,  but  diverted  his  obser 
vation  by  pursuing  his  studies  with  greater  earnestness. 
The  noise  increased,  and  advanced  nearer,  till  it  seemed 
at  the  door,  and  at  last  in  the  chamber.  He  looked  up 
and  saw  the  ghost  exactly  in  the  manner  it  had  been 
described  to  him ;  it  stood  before  him,  beckoning  with 
the  finger.  Athenodorus  made  a  sign  with  his  hand 


WITCHCRAFT.  91 

that  it  should  wait  a  little,  and  threw  his  eyes  again 
upon  his  papers ;  but  the  ghost  still  rattling  his  chains 
in  his  ears,  he  looked  up  and  saw  him  beckoning  as  be 
fore.  Upon  this  he  immediately  arose,  and  with  the 
light  in  his  hand  followed  it.  The  ghost  slowly  stalked 
along,  as  if  encumbered  with  his  chains,  and,  turning 
into  the  area  of  the  house,  suddenly  vanished.  Athe- 
nodorus,  being  thus  deserted,  made  a  mark  with  some 
grass  and  leaves  where  the  spirit  left  him.  The  next 
day  he  gave  information  of  this  to  the  magistrates,  and 
advised  them  to  order  that  spot  to  be  dug  up.  This 
was  accordingly  done,  and  the  skeleton  of  a  man  in 
chains  was  there  found ;  for  the  body,  having  lain  a  con 
siderable  time  in  the  ground,  was  putrefied  and  mould 
ered  away  from  the  fetters.  The  bones,  being  collected 
together,  were  publicly  buried,  and  thus,  after  the  ghost 
was  appeased  by  the  proper  ceremonies,  the  house  was 
haunted  no  more."  *  This  story  has  such  a  modern  air 
as  to  be  absolutely  disheartening.  Are  ghosts,  then,  as 
incapable  of  invention  as  dramatic  authors'?  But  the 
demeanor  of  Athenodorus  has  the  grand  air  of  the  clas 
sical  period,  of  one  qid  connait  son  monde,  and  feels  the 
superiority  of  a  living  philosopher  to  a  dead  Philistine. 
How  far  above  all  modern  armament  is  his  prophylactic 
against  his  insubstantial  fellow-lodger  !  Now-a-days 
men  take  pistols  into  haunted  houses.  Sterne,  and 
after  him  Novalis,  discovered  that  gunpowder  made  all 
men  equally  tall,  but  Athenodorus  had  found  out  that 
pen  and  ink  establish  a  superiority  in  spiritual  stature. 
As  men  of  this  world,  we  feel  our  dignity  exalted  by  his 
keeping  an  ambassador  from  the  other  waiting  till  he 
had  finished  his  paragraph.  Never  surely  did  author-  J 
ship  appear  to  greater  advantage.  Athenodorus  seems 
to  have  been  of  Hamlet's  mind : 

*  Pliny's  Letters,  VII.  27.    Melmoth's  translation. 


92  WITCHCRAFT. 

"  I  do  not  set  my  life  at  a  pin's  fee, 
And,  for  my  soul,  what  can  it  do  to  that, 
Being  a  thing  immortal,  as  itself  ?  "  * 

A  superstition,  as  its  name  imports,  is  something  that 
has  been  left  to  stand  over,  like  unfinished  business, 
from  one  session  of  the  world's  witenagemot  to  the  next. 
The  vulgar  receive  it  implicitly  on  the  principle  of  omne 
ignotum  pro  possibili,  a  theory  acted  on  by  a  much  larger 
number  than  is  commonly  supposed,  and  even  the  en 
lightened  are  too  apt  to  consider  it,  if  not  proved,  at  least 
rendered  probable  by  the  hearsay  evidence  of  popular 
experience.  Particular  superstitions  are  sometimes  the 
embodiment  by  popular  imagination  of  ideas  that  were  at 
first  mere  poetic  figments,  but  more  commonly  the  degrad 
ed  and  distorted  relics  of  religious  beliefs.  Dethroned 
gods,  outlawed  by  the  new  dynasty,  haunted  the  borders 
of  their  old  dominions,  lurking  in  forests  and  mountains, 
and  venturing  to  show  themselves  only  after  nightfall. 
Grimm  and  others  have  detected  old  divinities  skulking 
about  in  strange  disguises,  and  living  from  hand  to  mouth 
on  the  charity  of  Gammer  Grethel  and  Mere  1'Oie.  Cast 
out  from  Olympus  and  Asgard,  they  were  thankful  for 
the  hospitality  of  the  chimney-corner,  and  kept  soul  and 
body  together  by  an  illicit  traffic  between  this  world  and 
the  other.  While  Schiller  was  lamenting  the  Gods  of 
Greece,  some  of  them  were  nearer  neighbors  to  him  than 

*  Something  like  this  is  the  speech  of  Don  Juan,  after  the  statue  of 
Don  Gonzales  has  gone  out: 

"  Pero  todas  son  ideas 
Que  da  a  la  imaginacion 
El  temor ;  y  temer  muertos 
JEs  muy  villano  temor. 
Que  si  un  cuerpo  noble,  vivo, 
Con  potencias  y  razon 
Y  con  alma  no  se  tema, 
i  Quien  cuerpos  muertos  temio?  " 

El  Burlador  de  Sevilla,  A.  iii.  s.  15. 


WITCHCRAFT.  93 

he  dreamed ;  and  Heine  had  the  wit  to  turn  them  to 
delightful  account,  showing  himself,  perhaps,  the  wiser 
of  the  two  in  saving  what  he  could  from  the  shipwreck 
of  the  past  for  present  use  on  this  prosaic  Juan  Fernan 
dez  of  a  scientific  age,  instead  of  sitting  down  to  bewail 
it.  To  make  the  pagan  divinities  hateful,  they  were 
stigmatized  as  cacodacmons ;  and  as  the  human  mind 
finds  a  pleasure  in  analogy  and  system,  an  infernal  hie 
rarchy  gradually  shaped  itself  as  the  convenient  antip 
odes  and  counterpoise  of  the  celestial  one.  Perhaps  at 
the  bottom  of  it  all  there  was  a  kind  of  unconscious 
manicheism,  and  Satan,  as  Prince  of  Darkness,  or  of  the 
Powers  of  the  Air,  became  at  last  a  sovereign,  with  his 
great  feudatories  and  countless  vassals,  capable  of  main 
taining  a  not  unequal  contest  with  the  King  of  Heaven. 
He  was  supposed  to  have  a  certain  power  of  bestowing 
earthly  prosperity,  but  he  was  really,  after  all,  nothing- 
better  than  a  James  II.  at  St.  Germains,  who  could 
make  Dukes  of  Perth  and  confer  titular  fiefs  and  garters 
as  much  as  he  liked,  without  the  unpleasant  necessity 
of  providing  any  substance  behind  the  shadow.  That 
there  should  have  been  so  much  loyalty  to  him,  under 
these  disheartening  circumstances,  seems  to  me,  on  the 
whole,  creditable  to  poor  human  nature.  In  this  case 
it  is  due,  at  least  in  part,  to  that  instinct  of  the  poor 
among  the  races  of  the  North,  where  there  was  a  long 
winter,  and  too  often  a  scanty  harvest,  —  and  the  poor 
have  been  always  and  everywhere  a  majority,  —  which 
made  a  deity  of  Wish.  The  Acheronta-movebo  impulse 
must  have  been  pardonably  strong  in  old  women  starv 
ing  with  cold  and  hunger,  and  fathers  with  large  fami 
lies  and  a  small  winter  stock  of  provision.  Especially 
in  the  transition  period  from  the  old  religion  to  the  new, 
the  temptation  must  have  been  great  to  try  one's  luck 
with  the  discrowned  dynasty,  when  the  intruder  was 


94  WITCHCRAFT. 

deaf  and  blind  to  claims  that  seemed  just  enough,  so 
long  as  it  was  still  believed  that  God  personally  inter 
fered  in  the  affairs  of  men.  On  his  death-bed,  says 
Piers  Plowman, 

"  The  poore  dare  plede  and  prove  by  reson 
To  have  allowance  of  his  lord;  by  the  law  he  it  claimeth; 

Thanne  may  beggaris  as  beestes  after  boote  waiten 
That  al  hir  lif  han  lyved  in  langour  and  in  defaute 
But  God  sente  hem  som  tyme  som  manere  joye, 
Outlier  here  or  ellis  where,  kynde  wolde  it  nevere." 

'He  utters  the  common  feeling  when  he  says  that  it  were 
against  nature.  But  when  a  man  has  his  choice  be 
tween  here  and  elsewhere,  it  may  be  feared  that  the 
other  world  will  seem  too  desperately  far  away  to  be 
waited  for  when  hungry  ruin  has  him  in  the  wind,  and 
the  chance  on  earth  is  so  temptingly  near.  Hence  the 
notion  of  a  transfer  of  allegiance  from  God  to  Satan, 
sometimes  by  a  written  compact,  sometimes  with  the 
ceremony  by  which  homage  is  done  to  a  feudal  superior. 
Most  of  the  practices  of  witchcraft  —  such  as  the 
power  to  raise  storms,  to  destroy  cattle,  to  assume  the 
shape  of  beasts  by  the  use  of  certain  ointments,  to  in 
duce  deadly  maladies  in  men  by  waxen  images,  or  love 
by  means  of  charms  and  philtres  —  were  inheritances 
from  ancient  paganism.  But  the  theory  of  a  compact 
was  the  product  of  later  times,  the  result,  no  doubt,  of 
the  efforts  of  the  clergy  to  inspire  a  horror  of  any  lapse 
into  heathenish  rites  by  making  devils  of  all  the  old 
gods.  Christianity  may  be  said  to  have  invented  the 
soul  as  an  individual  entity  to  be  saved  or  lost ;  and 
thus  grosser  wits  were  led  to  conceive  of  it  as  a  piece  of 
property  that  could  be  transferred  by  deed  of  gift  or 
sale,  duly  signed,  sealed,  and  witnessed.  The  earliest 
legend  of  the  kind  is  that  of  Theophilus,  chancellor  of 
the  church  of  Adana  in  Cilicia  some  time  during  the 


WITCHCRAFT.  95 

sixth  century.  It  is  said  to  have  been  first  written  by 
Eutychianus,  who  had  been  a  pupil  of  Theophilus, 
and  who  tells  the  story  partly  as  an  eyewitness,  partly 
from  the  narration  of  his  master.  The  nun  Hroswitha\ 
first  treated  it  dramatically  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
tenth  century.  Some  four  hundred  years  later  Rute- 
beuf  made  it  the  theme  of  a  French  miracle-play.  His 
treatment  of  it  is  not  without  a  certain  poetic  merit. 
Theophilus  has  been  deprived  by  his  bishop  of  a  lucra 
tive  office.  In  his  despair  he  meets  with  Saladin,  qui 
parloit  au  deable  quant  il  voloit.  Saladin  tempts  him  to 
deny  God  and  devote  himself  to  the  Devil,  who,  in 
return,  will  give  him  back  all  his  old  prosperity  and 
more.  He  at  last  consents,  signs  and  seals  the  contract 
required,  and  is  restored  to  his  old  place  by  the  bishop. 
But  now  remorse  and  terror  come  upon  him  ;  he  calls 
on  the  Virgin,  who,  after  some  demur,  compels  Satan  to 
bring  back  his  deed  from  the  infernal  muniment-chest 
(which  must  have  been  fire-proof  beyond  any  skill  of 
our  modern  safe-makers),  and  the  bishop  having  read  it 
aloud  to  the  awe-stricken  congregation,  Theophilus  be 
comes  his  own  man  again.  In  this  play,  the  theory  of 
devilish  compact  is  already  complete  in  all  its  particu 
lars.  The  paper  must  be  signed  with  the  blood  of  the 
grantor,  who  does  feudal  homage  (or  joing  tes  mains,  et 
si  devien  mes  kom),  and  engages  to  eschew  good  and  do 
evil  all  the  days  of  his  life.  The  Devil,  however,  does 
not  imprint  any  stigma  upon  his  new  vassal,  as  in  the 
later  stories  of  witch-compacts.  The  following  passage 
from  the  opening  speech  of  Theophilus  will  illustrate 
the  conception  to  which  I  have  alluded  of  God  as  a 
liege  lord  against  whom  one  might  seek  revenge  on  suf 
ficient  provocation,  —  and  the  only  revenge  possible  was 
to  rob  him  of  a  jubject  by  going  over  to  the  great  Suze 
rain,  his  deadly  foe  :  — 


96  WITCHCRAFT. 

"  N'est  riens  que  por  avoir  ne  face; 
Ne  pris  riens  Dieu  et  sa  manace. 
Irai  me  je  noier  ou  pendre? 
Ie  ne  m'en  puis  pas  a  Dieu  prendre, 
C'on  ne  puet  a  lui  avenir. 

Mes  il  s'est  en  si  haut  lieu  mis, 
Por  eschiver  ses  anemis 
C'on  n'i  puet  trere  ni  lancier. 
Se  or  pooie  a  lui  tancier, 
Et  combattre  et  escrimir, 
La  char  li  feroie  fremir. 
Or  est  la  sus  en  son  solaz, 
Laz!  chetis!  et  je  sui  es  laz 
De  Povrete  et  de  Soufrete."  * 

During  the  Middle  Age's  the  story  became  a  favorite 
topic  with  preachers,  while  carvings  and  painted  win 
dows  tended  still  further  to  popularize  it,  and  to  render 
men's  minds  familiar  with  the  idea  which  makes  the  nexus 
of  its  plot.  The  plastic  hands  of  Calderon  shaped  it  into 
a  dramatic  poem  not  surpassed,  perhaps  hardly  equalled, 
in  subtile  imaginative  quality  by  any  other  of  modern 
times. 

In  proportion  as  a  belief  in  the  possibility  of  this 
damnable  merchandising  with  hell  became  general,  accu 
sations  of  it  grew  more  numerous.  Among  others,  the 
memory  of  Pope  Sylvester  II.  was  blackened  with  the 
charge  of  having  thus  bargained  away  his  soul.  All 
learning  fell  under  suspicion,  till  at  length  the  very 
grammar  itself  (the  last  volume  in  the  world,  one  would 
say,  to  conjure  with)  gave  to  English  the  word  gramary 
(enchantment),  and  in  French  became  a  book  of  magic, 
under  the  alias  of  Grimoire.  It  is  not  at  all  unlikely 
that,  in  an  age  when  the  boundary  between  actual  and 
possible  was  not  very  well  defined,^there  were  scholars 
who  made  experiments  in  this  direction,  and  signed  con- 

*  Theatre  Francais  an  Moyen  Age  (Monmerque'  et  Michel),  pp.  139, 
140. 


WITCHCRAFT.  97 

tracts,  though  they  never  had  a  chance  to  complete  their 
bargain  by  an  actual  delivery.  I  do  not  recall  any  case 
of  witchcraft  in  which  such  a  document  was  produced  in 
court  as  evidence  against  the  accused.  Such  a  one,  it  is 
true,  was  ascribed  to  Graiidier,  but  was  not  brought  for 
ward  at  his  trial.  It  should  seem  that  Grandier  had  been 
shrewd  enough  to  take  a  bond  to  secure  the  fulfilment 
of  the  contract  on  the  other  side  ;  for  we  have  the  docu 
ment  in  fac-simile,  signed  and  sealed  by  Lucifer,  Beelze 
bub,  Satan,  Elimi,  Leviathan,  and  Astaroth,  duly  wit 
nessed  by  Baalberith,  Secretary  of  the  Grand  Council  of 
Demons.  Fancy  the  competition  such  a  state  paper  as 
this  would  arouse  at  a  sale  of  autographs  !  Commonly 
no  security  appears  to  have  been  given  by  the  other 
party  to  these  arrangements  but  the  bare  word  of  the 
Devil,  which  was  considered,  no  doubt,  every  whit  as 
good  as  his  bond.  In  most  cases,  indeed,  he  was  the 
loser,  and  showed  a  want  of  capacity  for  affairs  equal  to 
that  of  an  average  giant  of  romance.  Never  was  com 
edy  acted  over  and  over  with  such  sameness  of  repetition 
as  "  The  Devil  is  an  Ass."  How  often  must  he  have 
exclaimed  (laughing  in  his  sleeve)  :  — 

"  I  to  such  blockheads  set  my  wit, 
/  damn  such  fools !  —  go,  go,  you  're  bit !  " 

In  popular  legend  he  is  made  the  victim  of  some  equivo 
cation  so  gross  that  any  court  of  equity  would  have 
ruled  in  his  favor.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  story  had 
been  dressed  up  by  some  mediaeval  Tract  Society,  the 
Virgin  appears  in  person  at  the  right  moment  ex  machina, 
and  compels  him  to  give  up  the  property  he  had  hon 
estly  paid  for.  One  is  tempted  to  ask,  Were  there  no 
attorneys,  then,  in  the  place  he  came  from,  of  whom  he 
might  have  taken  advice  beforehand  1  On  the  whole,  he 
had  rather  hard  measure,  and  it  is  a  wonder  he  did  not 
5  G 


98  WITCHCRAFT. 

throw  up  the  business  in  disgust.  Sometimes,  however, 
he  was  more  lucky,  as  with  the  unhappy  Dr.  Faust ;  and 
even  so  lately  as  1695,  he  came  in  the  shape  of  a  "  tall 
fellow  with  black  beard  and  periwig,  respectable  looking 
and  well  dressed,"  about  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
to  fly  away  with  the  Marechal  de  Luxembourg,  which, 
on  the  stroke  of  five,  he  punctually  did  as  per  contract, 
taking  with  him  the  window  and  its  stone  framing  into 
the  bargain.  The  clothes  and  wig  of  the  involuntary 
aeronaut  were,  in  the  handsomest  manner,  left  upon  the 
bed,  as  not  included  in  the  bill  of  sale.  In  this  case 
also  we  have  a  copy  of  the  articles  of  agreement, 
twenty-eight  in  number,  by  the  last  of  which  the  Mare 
chal  renounces  God  and  devotes  himself  to  the  enemy. 
This  clause,  sometimes  the  only  one,  always  the  most 
important  in  such  compacts,  seems  to  show  that  they 
first  took  shape  in  the  imagination,  while  the  struggle 
between  Paganism  and  Christianity  was  still  going  on. 
As  the  converted  heathen  was  made  to  renounce  his 
false  gods,  none  the  less  real  for  being  false,  so  the  rene 
gade  Christian  must  forswear  the  true  Deity.  It  is 
very  likely,  however,  that  the  whole  thing  may  be  more 
modern  than  the  assumed  date  of  Theophilus  would  im 
ply,  and  if  so,  the  idea  of  feudal  allegiance  gave  the 
first  hint,  as  it  certainly  modified  the  particulars,  of  the 
ceremonial. 

This  notion  of  a  personal  and  private  treaty  with  the 
Evil  One  has  something  of  dignity  about  it  that  has 
made  it  perennially  attractive  to  the  most  imaginative 
minds.  It  rather  flatters  than  mocks  our  feeling  of  the 
dignity  of  man.  As  we  come  down  to  the  vulgar  par 
ody  of  it  in  the  confessions  of  wretched  old  women  on 
the  rack,  our  pity  and  indignation  are  mingled  -with  dis 
gust.  One  of  the  most  particular  of  these  confessions 
is  that  of  Abel  de  la  Rue,  convicted  in  1584.  The 


WITCHCRAFT.  99 

accused  was  a  novice  in  the  Franciscan  Convent  at 
Meaux.  Having  been  punished  by  the  master  of  the 
novices  for  stealing  some  apples  and  nuts  in  the  convent 
garden,  the  Devil  appeared  to  him  in  the  shape  of  a 
black  dog,  promising  him  his  protection,  and  advising 
him  to  leave  the  convent.  Not  long  after  going  into  the 
sacristy,  he  saw  a  large  volume  fastened  by  a  chain,  and 
further  secured  by  bars  of  iron.  The  name  of  this 
book  was  Grimoire.  Thrusting  his  hands  through  the 
bars,  he  contrived  to  open  it,  and  having  read  a  sentence 
(which  Bodin  carefully  suppresses),  there  suddenly  ap 
peared  to  him  a  man  of  middle  stature,  with  a  pale  and 
very  frightful  countenance,  clad  in  a  long  black  robe  of 
the  Italian  fashion,  and  with  faces  of  men  like  his  own 
on  his  breast  and  knees.  As  for  his  feet  they  were  like 
those  of  cows.  He  could  not  have  been  the  most  agree 
able  of  companions,  ayant  le  corps  et  haleine  puante. 
This  man  told  him  not  to  be  afraid,  to  take  off  his 
habit,  to  put  faith  in  him,  and  he  would  give  him  what 
ever  he  asked.  Then  laying  hold  of  him  below  the 
arms,  the  unknown  transported  him  under  the  gallows 
of  Meaux,  and  then  said  to  him  with  a  trembling  and 
broken  voice,  and  having  a  visage  as  pale  as  that  of  a 
man  who  has  been  hanged,  and  a  very  stinking  breath, 
that  he  should  fear  nothing,  but  have  entire  confidence 
in  him,  that  he  should  never  want  for  anything,  that  his 
own  name  was  Maitre  Rigoux,  and  that  he  would  like  to 
be  his  master ;  to  which  De  la  Rue  made  answer  that  he 
would  do  whatever  he  commanded,  and  that  he  wished 
to  be  gone  from  the  Franciscans.  Thereupon  Rigoux 
disappeared,  but  returning  between  seven  and  eight  in 
the  evening,  took  him  round  the  waist  and  carried  him 
back  to  the  sacristy,  promising  to  come  again  for  him 
the  next  day.  This  he  accordingly  did,  and  told  De  la 
Rue  to  take  off  his  habit,  get  him  gone  from  the  con- 


100  WITCHCRAFT. 

vent,  and  meet  him  near  a  great  tree  on  the  high-road 
from  Meaux  to  Vaulx-Courtois.  Rigoux  met  him  there 
and  took  him  to  a  certain  Maitre  Pierre,  who,  after 
a  few  words  exchanged  in  an  undertone  with  Rigoux, 
sent  De  la  Rue  to  the  stable,  after  his  return  whence 
he  saw  no  more  of  Rigoux.  Thereupon  Pierre  and 
his  wife  made  him  good  cheer,  telling  him  that  for 
the  love  of  Maitre  Rigoux  they  would  treat  him 
well,  and  that  he  must  obey  the  said  Rigoux,  which 
he  promised  to  do.  About  two  months  after,  Maitre 
Pierre,  who  commonly  took  him  to  the  fields  to  watch 
cattle,  said  to  him  there  that  they  must  go  to  the  As 
sembly,  because  he  (Pierre)  was  out  of  powders,  to 
which  he  made  answer  that  he  was  willing.  Three  days 
later,  about  Christmas  eve,  1575,  Pierre  having  sent  his 
wife  to  sleep  out  of  the  house,  set  a  long  branch  of 
broom  in  the  chimney-corner,  and  bade  De  la  Rue  go 
to  bed,  but  not  to  sleep.  About  eleven  they  heard  a 
great  noise  as  of  an  impetuous  wind  and  thunder  in  the 
chimney :  which  hearing,  Maitre  Pierre  told  him  to 
dress  himself,  for  it  was  time  to  be  gone.  Then  Pierre 
took  some  grease  from  a  little  box  and  anointed  himself 
under  the  arm-pits,  and  De  la  Rue  on  the  palms  of  his 
hands,  which  incontinently  felt  as  if  on  fire,  and  the 
said  grease  stank  like  a  cat  three  weeks  or  a  month 
dead.  Then,  Pierre  and  he  bestriding  the  branch, 
Maitre  Rigoux  took  it  by  the  butt  and  drew  it  up  chim 
ney  as  if  the  wind  had  lifted  them.  And,  the  night 
being  dark,  he  saw  suddenly  a  torch  before  them  light 
ing  them,  and  Maitre  Rigoux  was  gone  unless  he  had 
changed  himself  into  the  said  torch.  Arrived  at  a 
grassy  place  some  five  leagues  from  Vaulx-Courtois,  they 
found  a  company  of  some  sixty  people  of  all  ages,  none 
of  whom  he  knew,  except  a  certain  Pierre  of  Damp- 
martin  and  an  old  woman  who  was  executed,  as  he  had 


WITCHCRAFT.  101 

heard,  about  five  years  ago  for  sorcery  at  Lagny.  Then 
suddenly  he  noticed  that  all  (except  Rigoux,  who  was 
clad  as  before)  were  dressed  in  linen,  though  they  had 
not  changed  their  clothes.  Then,  at  command  of  the 
eldest  among  them,  who  seemed  about  eighty  years  old, 
with  a  white  beard  and  almost  wholly  bald,  each  swept 
the  place  in  front  of  himself  with  his  broom.  There 
upon  Eigoux  changed  into  a  great  he-goat,  black  and 
stinking,  around  whom  they  all  danced  backward  with 
their  faces  outward  and  their  backs  towards  the  goat. 
They  danced  about  half  an  hour,  and  then  his  master 
told  him  they  must  adore  the  goat  who  was  the  Devil 
et  ce  fait  et  diet,  veit  que  ledict  Bouc  courba  ses  deux  pieds 
de  deuant  et  leua  son  cut  en  haut,  et  lors  que  certaines 
menues  graines  grosses  comme  testes  d'espingles,  qui  se  con- 
uertissoient  en  poudres  fort  puantes,  sentant  le  soulphre  et 
poudre  a  canon  et  chair  puant  meslees  ensemble  seroient 
tombees  sur  plusieurs  drappeaux  en  sept  doubles.  Then 
the  oldest,  and  so  the  rest  in  order,  went  forward  on 
their  knees  and  gathered  up  their  cloths  with  the  pow 
ders,  but  first  each  se  seroit  incline  vers  le  Diable  et  iceluy 
baise  en  la  partie  honteuse  de  son  corps.  They  went  home 
on  their  broom,  lighted  as  before.  De  la  Rue  confessed 
also  that  he  was  at  another  assembly  on  the  eve  of  St. 
John  Baptist.  With  the  powders  they  could  cause  the 
death  of  men  against  whom  they  had  a  spite,  or  their 
cattle.  Rigoux  before  long  began  to  tempt  him  to  drown 
himself,  and,  though  he  lay  down,  yet  rolled  him  some 
distance  towards  the  river.  It  is  plain  that  the  poor 
fellow  was  mad  or  half-witted  or  both.  And  yet  Bo- 
din,  the  author  of  the  DC  Republica,  reckoned  one  of  the 
ablest  books  of  that  age,  believed  all  this  filthy  nonsense, 
and  prefixes  it  to  his  Demonomanie,  as  proof  conclusive 
of  the  existence  of  sorcerers. 

This  was  in  1587.     Just  a  century  later,  Glanvil,  one 


102  WITCHCRAFT. 

of  the  most  eminent  men  of  his  day,  and  Henry  More, 
the  Platonist,  whose  memory  is  still  dear  to  the  lovers 
of  an  imaginative  mysticism,  were  perfectly  satisfied  with 
evidence  like  that  which  follows.  Elizabeth  Styles  con 
fessed,  in  1664,  "that  the  Devil  about  ten  years  since 
appeared  to  her  in  the  shape  of  a  handsome  Man,  and 
after  of  a  black  Dog.  That  he  promised  her  Money, 
and  that  she  should  live  gallantly,  and  have  the  pleasure 
of  the  World  for  twelve  years,  if  she  would  with  her 
Blood  sign  his  Paper,  which  was  to  give  her  soul  to  him 
and  observe  his  Laws  and  that  he  might  suck  her  Blood. 
This  after  Four  Solicitations,  the  Examinant  promised 
him  to  do.  Upon  which  he  pricked  the  fourth  Finger 
of  her  right  hand,  between  the  middle  and  upper  Joynt 
(where  the  Sign  at  the  Examination  remained)  and  with 
a  Drop  or  two  of  her  Blood,  she  signed  the  Paper  with 
an  0.  Upon  this  the  Devil  gave  her  sixpence  and  van 
ished  with  the  Paper.  That  since  he  hath  appeared  to 
her  in  the  Shape  of  a  Man,  and  did  so  on  Wednesday 
seven-night  past,  but  more  usually  he  appears  in  the 
Likeness  of  a  Dog,  and  Cat,  and  a  Fly  like  a  Millar, 
in  which  last  he  usually  sucks  in  the  Poll  about  four  of 
the  Clock  in  the  Morning,  and  did  so  Jan.  27,  and 
that  it  is  pain  to  her  to  be  so  suckt.  That  when  she 
hath  a  desire  to  do  harm  she  calls  the  Spirit  by  the  name 
of  Robin,  to  whom,  when  he  appeareth,  she  useth  these 
words,  0  Saihan,  give  me  my  purpose.  She  then  tells 
him  what  she  would  have  done.  And  that  he  should  so 
appear  to  her  was  part  of  her  Contract  with  him."  The 
Devil  in  this  case  appeared  as  a  black  (dark-com 
plexioned)  man  "  in  black  clothes,  with  a  little  band,"  — 
a  very  clerical -looking  personage.  "  Before  they  are 
carried  to  their  meetings  they  anoint  their  Foreheads 
and  Hand- Wrists  with  an  Oyl  the  Spirit  brings  them 
(which  smells  raw)  and  .then  they  are  carried  in  a  very 


WITCHCRAFT.  103 

short  time,  using  these  words  as  they  pass,  Thout,  tout  a 
tout,  throughout  and  about.  And  when  they  go  off  from 
their  Meetings  they  say,  Rentum,  Tormentum.  That  at 
every  meeting  before  the  Spirit  vanisheth  away,  he  ap 
points  the  next  meeting  place  and  time,  and  at  his 
departure  there  is  a  foul  smell.  At  their  meeting  they 
have  usually  Wine  or  good  Beer,  Cakes,  Meat  or  the  like. 
They  eat  and  drink  really  when  they  meet,  in  their  Bod 
ies,  dance  also  and  have  some  Musick.  The  Man  in 
black  sits  at  the  higher  end,  and  Anne  Bishop  usually 
next  him.  He  useth  some  words  before  meat,  and  none 
after ;  his  Voice  is  audible  but  very  low.  The  Man  in 
black  sometimes  plays  on  a  Pipe  or  Cittern,  and  the 
Company  dance.  At  last  the  Devil  vanisheth,  and  all 
are  carried  to  their  several  homes  in  a  short  space.  At 
their  parting  they  say,  A  Boy  !  merry  meet,  merry  part  !  " 
Alice  Duke  confessed  "  that  Anne  Bishop  persuaded  her 
to  go  with  her  into  the  Churchyard  in  the  Night-time,  and 
being  come  thither,  to  go  backward  round  the  Church, 
which  they  did  three  times.  In  their  first  round  they 
met  a  Man  in  black  Cloths  who  went  round  the  second 
time  with  them  ;  and  then  they  met  a  thing  in  the 
Shape  of  a  great  black  Toad  which  leapt  up  against 
the  Examinant's  Apron.  In  their  third  round  they  met 
somewhat  in  the  shape  of  a  Rat,  which  vanished  away." 
She  also  received  sixpence  from  the  Devil,  and  "  her  Fa 
miliar  did  commonly  suck  her  right  Breast  about  seven 
at  night  in  the  shape  of  a  little  Cat  of  a  dunnish  Colour, 
which  is  as  smooth  as  a  Want  [mole],  and  when  she 
is  suckt,  she  is  in  a  kind  of  Trance."  Poor  Christian 
Green  got  only  fourpence  half-penny  for  her  soul,  but 
her  bargain  was  made  some  years  later  than  that  of  the 
others,  and  quotations,  as  the  stock-brokers  would  say, 
ranged  lower.  Her  familiar  took  the  shape  of  a  hedge 
hog.  Julian  Cox  confessed  that  "  she  had  been  often 


104  WITCHCRAFT. 

tempted  by  the  Devil  to  be  a  Witch,  but  never  consented. 
That  one  Evening  she  walkt  about  a  Mile  from  her  own 
House  and  there  came  riding  towards  her  three  Persons 
upon  three  Broomstaves,  born  up  about  a  yard  and  a 
half  from  the  ground.  Two  of  them  she  formerly  knew, 
which  was  a  Witch  and  a  Wizzard  that  were  hanged  for 
Witchcraft  several  years  before.  The  third  person  she 
knew  not.  He  came  in  the  shape  of  a  black  Man,  and 
tempted  her  to  give  him  her  Soul,  or  to  that  effect,  and 
to  express  it  by  pricking  her  Finger  and  giving  her  name 
in  her  Blood  in  token  of  it,"  On  her  trial  Judge  Archer 
told  the  jury,  "  he  had  heard  that  a  Witch  could  not  re 
peat  that  Petition  in  the  Lord's  Prayer,  viz.  And  lead  us 
not  into  temptation,  and  having  this  occasion,  he  would 
try  the  Experiment."  The  jury  "  were  not  in  the  least 
measure  to  guide  their  Verdict  according  to  it,  because 
it  was  not  legal  Evidence."  Accordingly  it  was  found 
that  the  poor  old  trot  could  say  only,  Lead  us  into  temp 
tation,  or  Lead  us  not  into  no  temptation.  Probably  she 
used  the  latter  form  first,  and,  finding  she  had  blun 
dered,  corrected  herself  by  leaving  out  both  the  negatives. 
The  old  English  double  negation  seems  never  to  have 
been  heard  of  by  the  court.  Janet  Douglass,  a  pretended 
dumb  girl,  by  whose  contrivance  five  persons  had  been 
burned  at  Paisley,  in  1677,  for  having  caused  the  sick 
ness  of  Sir  George  Maxwell  by  means  of  waxen  and 
other  images,  having  recovered  her  speech  shortly  after, 
declared  that  she  "  had  some  smattering  knowledge  of 
the  Lord's  prayer,  which  she  had  heard  the  witches  re 
peat,  it  seems,  by  her  vision,  in  the  presence  of  the 
Devil  •  and  at  his  desire,  which  they  observed,  they 
added  to  the  word  art  the  letter  w,  which  made  it  run, 
'  Our  Father  which  wart  in  heaven,'  by  which  means  the 
Devil  made  the  application  of  the  prayer  to  himself." 
She  also  showed  on  the  arm  of  a  woman  named  Camp- 


WITCHCRAFT.  105 

bell  "  an  invisible  mark  which  she  had  gotten  from  the 
Devil."  The  wife  of  one  Barton  confessed  that  she  had 
engaged  "in  the  Devil's  service.  She  renounced  her 
baptism,  and  did  prostrate  her  body  to  the  foul  spirit, 
and  received  his  mark,  and  got  a  new  name  from  him, 
and  was  called  Margaratus.  She  was  asked  if  she  ever 
had  any  pleasure  in  his  company  1  '  Never  much,'  says 
she,  '  but  one  night  going  to  a  dancing  upon  Pentland 
Hills,  in  the  likeness  of  a  rough  tanny  [tawny]  dog, 
playing  on  a  pair  of  pipes ;  the  spring  he  played,'  says 
she,  '  was  The  silly  bit  chicken,  gar  cast  it  a  pickle,  and  it 
will  grow  meikle* "  *  In  1670,  near  seventy  of  both 
sexes,  among  them  fifteen  children,  were  executed  for 
witchcraft  at  the  village  of  Mohra  in  Sweden.  Thirty- 
six  children,  between  the  ages  of  nine  and  sixteen,  were 
sentenced  to  be  scourged  with  rods  on  the  palms  of  their 
hands,  once  a  week  for  a  year.  The  evidence  in  this 
case  against  the  accused  seems  to  have  been  mostly  that 
of  children.  "  Being  asked  whether  they  were  sure  that 
they  were  at  any  time  carried  away  by  the  Devil,  they 
all  declared  they  were,  begging  of  the  Commissioners 
that  they  might  be  freed  from  that  intolerable  slavery." 
They  "  used  to  go  to  a  Gravel  pit  which  lay  hardby  a 
Cross-way  and  there  they  put  on  a  vest  over  their  heads, 
and  then  danced  round,  and  after  ran  to  the  Cross-way  and 
called  the  Devil  thrice,  first  with  a  still  Voice,  the  sec 
ond  time  somewhat  louder,  and  the  third  time  very 
loud,  with  these  words,  Antecessour,  come  and  carry  us  to 
BlocTcula.  Whereupon  immediately  he  used  to  appear, 
but  in  different  Habits  ;  but  for  the  most  part  they  saw 
him  in  a  gray  Coat  and  red  and  blue  Stockings.  He  had 
a  red  Beard,  a  highcrowned  Hat,  with  linnen  of  divers 

*  "  There  sat  Atild  Nick  in  shape  p'  beast, 
A  towzy  tyke,  black,  grim,  an'  large, 
To  gie  them  music  was  his  charge." 
5* 


106  WITCHCRAFT. 

Colours  wrapt  about  it,  and  long  Garters  upon  his  Stock 
ings."     "  They  must  procure  some  Scrapings  of  Altars 
and  Filings  of  Church-Clocks  [bells],  and  he  gives  them 
a  Horn  with  some  Salve  in  it  wherewith  they  do  anoint 
themselves."     "Being  asked  whether  they  were  sure  of 
a  real  personal  Transportation,  and  whether  they  were 
awake  when  it  was  done,  they  all  answered  in  the  Af 
firmative,  and  that  the  Devil  sometimes  laid  something 
down  in  the  Place  that  was  very  like  them.     But  one  of 
them  confessed  that  he  did  only  take  away  her  Strength, 
and  her  Body  lay  still  upon  the  Ground.     Yet  some 
times  he  took  even  her  Body  with  him."     "  Till  of  late 
they  never  had  that  power  to  carry  away  Children,  but 
only  this  year  and  the  last,  and  the  Devil  did  at  this 
time  force  them  to  it.     That  heretofore  it  was  sufficient 
to  carry  but  one  of  their  Children  or  a  Stranger's  Child, 
which  yet  happened  seldom,  but  now  he  did  plague  them, 
and  whip  them  if  they  did  not  procure  him  Children,  in 
somuch  that  they  had  no  peace  or  quiet  for  him ;  and 
whereas  formerly  one  Journey  a  Week  would  'serve  their 
turn  from  their  own  town  to  the  place  aforesaid,  now 
they  were  forced  to  run  to  other  Towns  and  Places  for 
Children,  and  that  they  brought  with  them  some  fifteen, 
some  sixteen  Children  every  night.     For  their  journey 
they  made   use   of  all  sorts  of  Instruments,  of  Beasts, 
of  Men,  of  Spits,  and  Posts,  according  as  they  had  op 
portunity.     If  they  do  ride  upon  Goats  and  have  many 
Children  with  them,"  they  have  a  way  of  lengthening 
the  goat  with  a  spit,  "  and  then  are  anointed  with  the 
aforesaid  Ointment.     A  little  Girl  of  Elfdale  confessed, 
That,  naming  the  name  of  JESUS,  as  she  was  carried 
away,  she  fell  suddenly  upon  the  Ground  and  got  a  great 
hole  in  her  Side,  which  the  Devil  presently  healed  up 
again.     The  first  thing  they  must  do  at  Blockula  was 
that  they  must  deny  all  and  devote  themselves  Body  and 


WITCHCRAFT.  107 

Soul  to  the  Devil,  and  promise  to  serve  him  faithfully, 
and  confirm  all  this  with  an  Oath.  Hereupon  they  cut 
their  Fingers,  and  with  their  Bloud  writ  their  Name  in 
his  Book.  He  caused  them  to  be  baptized  by  such 
Priests  as  he  had  there  and  made  them  confirm  their 
Baptism  with  dreadful  Oaths  and  Imprecations.  Here 
upon  the  Devil  gave  them  a  Purse,  wherein  their  filings 
of  Clocks  [bells],  with  a  Stone  tied  to  it,  which  they 
threw  into  the  Water,  and  then  they  were  forced  to  speak 
these  words  :  As  these  filings  of  the  Clock  do  never  return 
to  the  Clock  from  which  they  are  taken,  so  may  my  soul 
never  return  to  Heaven.  The  diet  they  did  use  to  have 
there  was  Broth  with  Colworts  and  Bacon  in  it,  Oatmeal- 
Bread  spread  with  Butter,  Milk,  and  Cheese.  Sometimes 
it  tasted  very  well,  sometimes  very  ill.  After  Meals, 
they  went  to  Dancing,  and  in  the  mean  while  Swore  and 
Cursed  most  dreadfully,  and  afterward  went  to  fighting 
one  with  another.  The  Devil  had  Sons  and  Daughters 
by  them,  which  he  did  marry  together,  and  they  did 
couple  and  brought  forth  Toads  and  Serpents.  If  he 
hath  a  mind  to  be  merry  with  them,  he  lets  them  all  ride 
upon  Spits  before  him,  takes  afterwards  the  Spits  and 
beats  them  black  and  blue,  and  then  laughs  at  them. 
They  had  seen  sometimes  a  very  great  Devil  like  a 
Dragon,  with  fire  about  him  and  bound  with  an  Iron 
Chain,  and  the  Devil  that  converses  with  them  tells  them 
that,  if  they  confess  anything,  he  will  let  that  great 
Devil  loose  upon  them,  whereby  all  Sweedland  shall  come 
into  great  danger.  The  Devil  taught  them  to  milk, 
which  was  in  this  wise  :  they  used  to  stick  a  knife  in  the 
Wall  and  hang  a  kind  of  Label  on  it,  which  they  drew 
and  stroaked,  and  as  long  as  this  lasted  the  Persons  that 
they  had  Power  over  were  miserably  plagued>  and  the 
Beasts  were  milked  that  way  till  sometimes  they  died  of 
it.  The  minister  of  Elfdale  declared  that  one  Night 


108  WITCHCRAFT. 

these  Witches  were  to  his  thinking  upon  the  crown  of 
his  Head  and  that  from  thence  he  had  had  a  long-con 
tinued  Pain  of  the  Head.  One  of  the  Witches  con 
fessed,  too,  that  the  Devil  had  sent  her  to  torment  the 
Minister,  and  that  she  was  ordered  to  use  a  Nail  and 
strike  it  into  his  Head,  but  it  would  not  enter  very  deep. 
They  confessed  also  that  the  Devil  gives  them  a  Beast 
about  the  bigness  and  shape  of  a  young  Cat,  which  they 
call  a  Carrier -,  and  that  he  gives  them  a  Bird  too  as  big 
as  a  Raven,  but  white.  And  these  two  Creatures  they 
can  send  anywhere,  and  wherever  they  come  they  take 
away  all  sorts  of  Victuals  they  can  get.  What  the  Bird 
brings  they  may  keep  for  themselves ;  but  what  the 
Carrier  brings  they  must  reserve  for  the  Devil.  The 
Lords  Commissioners  were  indeed  very  earnest  and  took 
great  Pains  to  persuade  them  to  show  some  of  their 
Tricks,  but  to  no  Purpose  \  for  they  did  all  unanimously 
confess,  that,  since  they,  had  confessed  all,  they  found 
that  all  their  Witchcraft  wast  gone,  and  that  the  Devil 
at  this  time  appeared  to  them  very  terrible  with  Claws 
on  his  Hands  and  Feet,  and  with  Horns  on  his  Head  and 
a  long  Tail  behind."  At  Blockula  "the  Devil  had  a 
Church,  such  another  as  in  the  town  of  Mohra.  When 
the  Commissioners  were  coming,  he  told  the  Witches 
they  should  not  fear  them,  for  he  would  certainly  kill 
them  all.  And  they  confessed  that  some  of  them  had 
attempted  to  murther  the  Commissioners,  but  had  not 
been  able  to  effect  it." 

In  these  confessions  we  find  included  nearly  all  the 
particulars  of  the  popular  belief  concerning  witchcraft, 
and  see  the  gradual  degradation  of  the  once  superb  Lu 
cifer  to  the  vulgar  scarecrow  with  horns  and  tail.  "  The 
Prince  of  Darkness  was  a  gentleman."  From  him  who 
had  not  lost  all  his  original  brightness,  to  this  dirty  fel 
low  who  leaves  a  stench,  sometimes  of  brimstone,  behind 


WITCHCRAFT.  109 

him,  the  descent  is  a  long  one.  For  the  dispersion  of 
this  foul  odor  Dr.  Henry  More  gives  an  odd  reason. 
"  The  Devil  also,  as  in  other  stories,  leaving  an  ill  smell 
behind  him,  seems  to  imply  the  reality  of  the  business, 
those  adscititious  particles  he  held  together  in  his  visible 
vehicle  being  loosened  at  his  vanishing  and  so  offending 
the  nostrils  by  their  floating  and  diffusing  themselves  in 
the  open  Air."  In  all  the  stories  vestiges  of  Paganism 
are  not  indistinct.  The  three  principal  witch  gatherings 
of  the  year  were  held  on  the  days  of  great  pagan  festi 
vals,  which  were  afterwards  adopted  by  the  Church. 
Maury  supposes  the  witches'  Sabbath  to  be  derived  from 
the  rites  of  Bacchus  Sabazius,  and  accounts  in  this  way 
for  the  Devil's  taking  the  shape  of  a  he-goat.  But  the 
name  was  more  likely  to  be  given  from  hatred  of  the 
Jews,  and  the  goat  may  have  a  much  less  remote  origin. 
Bodin  assumes  the  identity  of  the  Devil  with  Pan,  and 
in  the  popular  mythology  both  of  Kelts  and  Teutons 
there  were  certain  hairy  wood-demons  called  by  the 
former  Dus  and  by  the  latter  Scrat.  Our  common  names 
of  Dense  and  Old  Scratch  are  plainly  derived  from  these, 
and  possibly  Old  Harry  is  a  corruption  of  Old  Hairy. 
By  Latinization  they  became  Satyrs.  Here,  at  any  rate, 
is  the  source  of  the  cloven  hoof.  The  belief  in  the 
Devil's  appearing  to  his  worshippers  as  a  goat  is  very  old. 
Possibly  the  fact  that  this  animal  was  sacred  to  Thor, 
the  god  of  thunder,  may  explain  it.  Certain  it  is  that 
the  traditions  of  Vulcan,  Thor,  and  Wayland  *  converged 
at  last  in  Satan.  Like  Vulcan,  he  was  hurled  from  heav 
en,  and  like  him  he  still  limps  across  the  stage  in  Mephis- 
topheles,  though  without  knowing  why.  In  Germany, 
he  has  a  horse's  and  not  a  cloven  foot,f  because  the 

*  Hence,  perhaps,  the  name  Valant  applied  to  the  Devil,  about  the 
origin  of  which  Grimm  is  in  doubt, 
t  One  foot  of  the  Greek  Empusa  was  an  ass's  hoof. 


110  WITCHCRAFT. 

horse  was  a  frequent  pagan  sacrifice,  and  therefore  asso 
ciated  with  devil-worship  under  the  new  dispensation. 
Hence  the  horror  of  hippophagisrn  which  some  French 
gastronomes  are  striving  to  overcome.  Everybody  who 
has  read  "  Tom  Brown,"  or  Wordsworth's  Sonnet  on  a 
German  stove,  remembers  the  Saxon  horse  sacred  to 
Woden.  The  raven  was  also  his  peculiar  bird,  and 
Grimm  is  inclined  to  think  this  the  reason  why  the 
witch's  familiar  appears  so  often  in  that  shape.  It  is 
true  that  our  Old  Nick  is  derived  from  NikJcar,  one  of 
the  titles  of  that  divinity,  but  the  association  of  the 
Evil  One  with  the  raven  is  older,  and  most  probably  ow 
ing  to  the  ill-omened  character  of  the  bird  itself.  Al 
ready  in  the  apocryphal  gospel  of  the  "  Infancy,"  the 
demoniac  Son  of  the  Chief  Priest  puts  on  his  head  one 
of  the  swaddling-clothes  of  Christ  which  Mary  has  hung 
out  to  dry,  and  forthwith  "  the  devils  began  to  come  out 
of  his  mouth  and  to  fly  away  as  crows  and  serpents." 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  witches  underwent  a  form 
of  baptism.  As  the  system  gradually  perfected  itself 
among  the  least  imaginative  of  men,  as  the  superstitious 
are  apt  to  be,  they  could  do  nothing  better  than  de 
scribe  Satan's  world  as  in  all  respects  the  reverse  of  that 
which  had  been  conceived  by  the  orthodox  intellect 
as  Divine.  Have  you  an  illustrated  Bible  of  the  last 
century  1  Very  good.  Turn  it  upside  down,  and  you 
find  the  prints  on  the  whole  about  as  near  nature  as  ever, 
and  yet  pretending  to  be  something  new  by  a  simple  de 
vice  that  saves  the  fancy  a  good  deal  of  trouble.  For, 
while  it  is  true  that  the  poetic  fancy  plays,  yet  the  fac 
ulty  which  goes  by  that  pseudonyme  in  prosaic  minds 
(and  it  was  by  such  that  the  details  of  this  Satanic  com- 
merce  were  pieced  together)  is  hard  put  to  it  for  inven 
tion,  and  only  too  thankful  for  any  labor-saving  contri 
vance  whatsoever.  Accordingly,  all  it  need  take  the 


WITCHCRAFT.  Ill 

trouble  to  do  was  to  reverse  the  ideas  of  sacred  things 
already  engraved  on  its  surface,  and  behold,  a  kingdom 
of  hell  with  all  the  merit  and  none  of  the  difficulty  of 
originality  !  "  Uti  olim  Deus  populo  suo  Hierosolymis 
Synagogas  erexit  ut  in  iis  ignarus  legis  divinse  populus 
erudiretur,  voluntatemque  Dei  placitam  ex  verbo  in  iis 
praedicato  hauriret ;  ita  et  Diabolus  in  omnibus  omnino 
suis  actionibus  simiain  Dei  agens,  gregi  suo  acherontico 
conventus  et  synagogas,  quas  satanica  sabbata  vocant, 

indicit Atque  de  hisce  Conventibus  et  Synagogis 

Lamiarum  nullus  Antorum  quos  quidem  evolvi,  imo  nee 
ipse  Lamiarum  Patronus  [here  he  glances  at  Wierus] 
scilicet  ne  dubiolum  quidem  movit.  Adeo  ut  tuto  affir- 
mari  liceat  conventus  a  diabolo  certo  institui.  Quos  vel 
ipse,  tanquam  presses  collegii,  vel  per  dasmonem,  qui  ad 
cujuslibet  saga3  custodiam  constitutus  est,  ....  vel  per 
alios  Magos  aut  sagas  per  unum  aut  duos  dies  ante- 

quam  fiat  congregatio  denunciat Loci  in  quibus 

solent  a  damione  coetus  et  conventicula  malefica  institui 
plcrumque  sunt  sylvestres,  occulti,  subterranei,  et  ab 
hominum  conversatione  remoti Evocatse  hoc  mo- 
do  et  tempore  Lamia),  ....  da3mon  illis  persuadet  eas 
non  posse  conventiculis  interesse  nisi  nudum  corpus 
unguento  ex  corpusculis  infantum  ante  baptismum  neca- 
torum  prseparato  illinant,  idque  propterea  solum  illis 
persuadet  ut  ad  quam  plurimas  infantum  insontium  csedes 

eas  alliciat Unctionis  ritu  peracto,  abiturientes, 

ne  forte  a  maritis  in  lectis  desiderantur,  vel  per  incanta- 
tionern  somnum,  aurem  nimirum  vellicando  dextra  manu 
prius  proedicto  unguine  illita,  conciliant  maritis  ex  quo 
non  facile  possunt  excitari ;  vel  da3mones  personas  quas- 
dam  dormientibus  adumbrant,  quas,  si  contigeret  exper- 
gisci,  suas  uxores  esse  putarent ;  vel  interea  alms  daemon 
in  forma  succubi  ad  latus  maritorum  adjungitur  qui  loco 
uxoris  est.  .  .  Et  ita  sine  omni  remora  insidentes 


112  WITCHCRAFT. 

baculo,  furcae,  scopis,  aut  arundini  vel  tauro,  equo,  sui, 
hirco,  aut  cani,  quorum  omnium  exempla  prodidit  Memig. 

L.  I.  c.  14,  devehuntur  a  dsemone  ad  loca  destinata 

Ibi  daemon  prseses  conventus  in  solio  sedet  magnifico, 
forma  terrifica,  ut  plurimum  hirci  vel  canis.  Ad  quern 
advenientes  viri  juxta  ac  mulieres  accedunt  reveren- 
tiae  exhibendae  et  adorandi  gratia,  non  tamen  uno 
eodemque  modo.  Interdum  complicatis  genubus  sup- 
plices ;  interdum  obverso  incedentes  tergo  et  modo  re- 
trogrado,  in  oppositum  directo  illi  reverentiae  quam  nos 
praestare  solemus.  In  signum  homagii  (sit  honor  castis 
auribus)  Principem  suum  hircum  in  [obscaenissimo  quo- 
dam  corporis  loco]  summa  cum  reverentia  sacrilego  ore 
osculantur.  Quo  facto,  sacrificia  daemoni  faciunt  multis 
modis.  Ssepe  liberos  suos  ipsi  ofFerunt.  Seepe  com- 
munione  sumpta  benedictam  hostiam  in  ore  asservatam 
et  extractam  (horreo  dicere)  daernoni  oblatam  coram  eo 
pede  conculcant.  His  et  similibus  flagitiis  et  abomina- 
tionibus  execrandis  commissis,  incipiunt  mensis  assidere 
et  convivari  de  cibis  insipidis,  insulsis,*  furtivis,  quos 
daemon  suppeditat,  vel  quos  singulae  attulere,  inderdum 

tripudiant  ante  convivium,  interdum  post  illud 

JSTec  mcnsse  sua  deest  benedictio  coetu  hoc  digna,  verbis 
constans  plane  blasphemis  quibus  ipsum  Beelzebub  et 
creatorem  et  datorem  et  conservatorem  omnium  profi- 
tcntur.  Eadem  sententia  est  gratiarum  actionis.  Post 
convivium,  dorsis  invicem  obversis  ....  choreas  ducere 
et  cantare  fescenninos  in  honorem  dsemonis  obsc&enissi- 
mos,  vel  ad  tympanum  fistulamve  sedentis  alicujus  in 
bifida  arbore  saltare  ....  turn  suis  amasiis  deemonibus 
foedissime  commisceri.  Ultimo  pulveribus  (quos  aliqui 
scribunt  esse  cineres  hirci  illis  quern  daemon  assumpserat 
et  quern  adorant  subito  coram  illius  flamma  absumpti)  vel 
venenis  aliis  acceptis,  saepe  etiam  cuique  indicto  nocendi 
*  Salt  was  forbidden  at  these  witch-feasts. 


WITCHCRAFT.  113 

penso,  et  pronunciato  Pseudothei  dsemonis  decreto, 
ULCISCAMINI  vos,  ALIOQUI  MORIEMINI.  Duabus  aut  tribus 
horis  in  hisce  ludis  exactis  circa  Gallicinium  daemon  con- 
vivas  suas  dimittit."  *  Sometimes  they  were  baptized 
anew.  Sometimes  they  renounced  the  Virgin,  whom 
they  called  in  their  rites  extensam  mulierem.  If  the 
Ave  Mary  bell  should  ring  while  the  demon  is  con 
veying  home  his  witch,  he  lets  her  drop.  In  the  confes 
sion  of  Agnes  Simpson  the  meeting  place  was  North 
Berwick  Kirk.  "  The  Devil  started  up  himself  in  the 
pulpit,  like  a  incite  black  man,  and  calling  the  row 
[roll]  every  one  answered,  Here.  At  bis  command  they 
opened  up  three  graves  and  cutted  off  from  the  dead 
corpses  the  joints  of  their  fingers,  toes,  and  nose,  and 
parted  them  amongst  them,  and  the  said  Agnes  Simpson 
got  for  her  part  a  winding-sheet  and  two  joints.  The 
Devil  commanded  them  to  keep  the  joints  upon  them 
while  [till]  they  were  dry,  and  then  to  make  a  powder 
of  them  to  do  evil  withal."  This  confession  is  sadly 
memorable,  for  it  was  made  before  James  I.,  then  king 
of  Scots,  and  is  said  to  have  convinced  him  of  the  reality 
of  witchcraft.  Hence  the  act  passed  in  the  first  year  of 
his  reign  in  England,  and  not  repealed  till  1736,  under 
which,  perhaps  in  consequence  of  which,  so  many  suf 
fered. 

The  notion  of  these  witch-gatherings  was  first  sug 
gested,  there  can  be  little  doubt,  by  secret  conventicles 
of  persisting  or  relapsed  pagans,  or  of  heretics.  Both, 
perhaps,  contributed  their  share.  Sometimes  a  moun 
tain,  as  in  Germany  the  Blocksberg,|  sometimes  a  con- 

*  De  Lamiis,  p.  59  et  seq. 

t  If  the  Blokula  of  the  Swedish  witches  be  a  reminiscence  of  this, 
it  would  seem  to  point  back  to  remote  times  and  heathen  ceremonies. 
But  it  is  so  impossible  to  distinguish  what  was  put  into  the  mind  of 
those  who  confessed  by  their  examining  torturers  from  what  may  have 
been  there  before,  the  result  of  a  common  superstition,  that  perhaps, 

ii 


114  WITCHCRAFT. 

spicuous  oak  or  linden,  and  there  were  many  such  among 
both  Gauls  and  Germans  sacred  of  old  to  pagan  rites, 
and  later  a  lonely  heath,  a  place  where  two  roads  crossed 
each  other,  a  cavern,  gravel-pit,  or  quarry,  the  gallows, 
or  the  churchyard,  was  the  place  appointed  for  their  dia 
bolic  orgies.  That  the  witch  could  be  conveyed  bodily 
to  these  meetings  was  at  first  admitted  without  any 
question.  But  as  the  husbands  of  accused  persons  some 
times  testified  that  their  wives  had  not  left  their  beds  on 
the  alleged  night  of  meeting,  the  witchmongers  were 
put  to  strange  shifts  by  way  of  accounting  for  it.  Some 
times  the  Devil  imposed  on  the  husband  by  a  deceptio 
msus  ;  sometimes  a  demon  took  the  place  of  the  wife  ; 
sometimes  the  body  was  left  and  the  spirit  only  trans 
ported.  But  the  more  orthodox  opinion  was  in  favor  of 
corporeal  deportation.  Bodin  appeals  triumphantly  to 
the  cases  of  Habbakuk  (now  in  the  Apocrypha,  but  once 
making  a  part  of  the  Book  of  Daniel),  and  of  Philip  in 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  "  I  find,"  he  says,  "  this 
ecstatic  ravishment  they  talk  of  much  more  wonderful 
than  bodily  transport.  And  if  the  Devil  has  this  power, 
as  they  confess,  of  ravishing  the  spirit  out  of  the  body, 
is  it  not  more  easy  to  carry  body  and  soul  without  sepa 
ration  or  division  of  the  reasonable  part,  than  to  with 
draw  and  divide  the  one  from  the  other  without  death  ] " 
The  author  of  De  Lamiis  argues  for  the  corporeal  theory. 
"  The  evil  Angels  have  the  same  superiority  of  natural 
power  as  the  good,  since  by  the  Fall  they  lost  none  of 
the  gifts  of  nature,  but  only  those  of  grace."  Now,  as 
we  know  that  good  angels  can  thus  transport  men  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye,  it  follows  that  evil  ones  may  do  the 
same.  He  fortifies  his  position  by  a  recent  example  from 
secular  history.  "  No  one  doubts  about  John  Faust,  who 

after  all,  the  meeting  on  mountains  may  have  been  suggested  by  what 
Pliny  says  of  the  dances  of  Satyrs  on  Mount  Atlas. 


WITCHCRAFT.  115 

dwelt  at  Wittenberg,  in  the  time  of  the  sainted  Luther, 
and  who,  seating  himself  on  his  cloak  with  his  compan 
ions,  was  conveyed  away  and  borne  by  the  Devil  through 
the  air  to  distant  kingdoms."  *  Glanvin  inclines  rather 
to  the  spiritual  than  the  material  hypothesis,  and  sug 
gests  "  that  the  Witch's  anointing  herself  before  she 
takes  her  flight  may  perhaps  serve  to  keep  the  body  ten- 
antable  and  in  fit  disposition  to  receive  the  spirit  at  its 
return."  Aubrey,  whose  "  Miscellanies  "  were  published 
in  1696,  had  no  doubts  whatever  as  to  the  physical 
asportation  of  the  witch.  He  says  that  a  gentleman 
of  his  acquaintance  "was  in  Portugal  anno  1655,  when 
one  was  burnt  by  the  inquisition  for  being  brought 
thither  from  Goa,  in  East  India,  in  the  air,  in  an  incredi 
ble  short  time."  As  to  the  conveyance  of  witches 
through  crevices,  keyholes,  chimneys, 'and  the  like,  Herr 
Walburger  discusses  the  question  with  such  comical 
gravity  that  we  must  give  his  argument  in  the  undimin- 
ished  splendor  of  its  jurisconsult  latinity.  The  first 
sentence  is  worthy  of  Magister  Bartholomseus  Kuckuk. 
"  Hsec  realis  delatio  trahit  me  quoque  ad  illam  vulgo 
agitatam  queestionem  :  An  diabolus  Lamias  corpore  per 
angusta  foramina  2^^tum,  fenestrarum,  portarum  out 
per  cavernas  ignifluas  ferre  queant  ?  "  (Surely  if  tace  be 
good  Latin  for  a  candle,  caverna  igniflua  should  be  flatter 
ing  to  a  chimney.)  "  Resp.  Lamiae  prsedicto  modo  ssepius 
fatentur  sese  a  diabolo  per  caminum  aut  alia  loca  angus- 
tiora  scopis  insidentes  per  eerem  ad  montem  Bructerorum 
deferri.  Verum  deluduntur  a  Satana  istsec  mulieres  hoc 
casu  egregie  nee  revera  rimulas  istas  penetrant,  sed 
solummodo  daemon  pnecedens  latenter  aperit  et  claudit 
januas  vel  fenestras  corporis  earum  capaces,  per  quas  eas 

*  Wierus,  whose  book  was  published  not  long  after  Faust's  death, 
apparently  doubted  the  whole  story,  for  he  alludes  to  it  with  an  ut 
fertur,  and  plainly  looked  on  him  as  a  mountebank. 


116  WITCHCRAFT. 

intromittit  quse  putant  se  formam  animalculi  parvi,  mus- 
telse,  catti,  locustse,  et  aliorum  induisse.  At  si  forte 
contingat  ut  per  parietem  se  delatam  confiteatur  Saga, 
tune,  si  non  totum  hoc  preestigiosum  est,  dasinonem 
tamen  maxima  celeritate  tot  quot  sufficiunt  lapides  exi- 
mere  et  sustinere  aliosne  ruant,  et  postea  eadem  celeritate. 
iterum  eos  in  suum  locum  repoiiere,  existimo  :  cum 
hominum  adspectus  hanc  tartarei  latonii  fraudem  nequeat 
deprendere.  Idem  quoque  judicium  esse  potest  de  trans- 
latione  per  caminum.  Siquidem  si  caverna  igniflua  justoe 
amplitudinis  est  ut  nullo  impedimento  et  hsesitatione 
corpus  humanum  earn  perrepere  possit,  diabolo  impossi- 
bile  non  esse  per  earn  eas  educere.  Si  vero  per  inpropor- 
tionatum  (ut  ita  loquar)  corporibus  spatium  eas  educit 
tune  meras  illusiones  prsestigiosas  esse  censeo,  nee  a  dia 
bolo  hoc  unquam  effici  posse.  Ratio  est,  quoniam  diabo- 
lus  essentiarn  creatures  seu  lamise  immutare  non  potest, 
multo  minus  efficere  ut  majus  corpus  penetret  per  spa 
tium  inproportionatum,  alioquiii  corporum  penetratio 
esset  admittenda  quod  contra  naturam  et  omne  Physi- 
corum  principium  est."  This  is  fine  reasoning,  and  the 
ut  ita  loquar  thrown  in  so  carelessly,  as  if  with  a  depre 
catory  wave  of  the  hand  for  using  a  less  classical  locution 
than  usual,  strikes  me  as  a  very  delicate  touch  indeed. 

Grimm  tells  us  that  he  does  not  know  when  broom 
sticks,  spits,  and  similar  utensils  were  first  assumed  to 
be  the  canonical  instruments  of  this  nocturnal  equita 
tion.  He  thinks  it  comparatively  modern,  but  I  sus 
pect  it  is  as  old  as  the  first  child  that  ever  bestrode  his 
father's  staff,  and  fancied  it  into  a  courser  shod  with  wind, 
like  those  of  Pindar.  Alas  for  the  poverty  of  human 
invention  !  It  cannot  afford  a  hippogriff  for  an  every 
day  occasion.  The  poor  old  crones,  badgered  by  inquisi 
tors  into  confessing  they  had  been  where  they  never  were, 
were  involved  in  the  further  necessity  of  explaining  how 


WITCHCRAFT.  117 

the  devil  they  got  there.  The  only  steed  their  parents 
had  ever  been  rich  enough  to  keep  had  been  of  this  do 
mestic  sort,  and  they  no  doubt  had  ridden  in  this  inex 
pensive  fashion,  imagining  themselves  the  grand  dames 
they  saw  sometimes  flash  by,  in  the  happy  days  of  child 
hood,  now  so  far  away.  Forced  to  give  a  how,  and  un 
able  to  conceive  of  mounting  in  the  air  without  some 
thing  to  sustain  them,  their  bewildered  wits  naturally 
took  refuge  in  some  such  simple  subterfuge,  and  the 
broomstave,  which  might  make  part  of  the  poorest 
house's  furniture,  was  the  nearest  at  hand.  If  youth 
and  good  spirits  could  put  such  life  into  a  dead  stick 
once,  why  not  age  and  evil  spirits  now  1  Moreover, 
what  so  likely  as  an  emeritus  implement  of  this  sort  to 
become  the  staff  of  a  withered  beldame,  and  thus  to  be 
naturally  associated  with  her  image  1  I  remember  very 
well  a  poor  half-crazed  creature,  who  always  wore  a  scar 
let  cloak  and  leaned  on  such  a-  stay,  cursing  and  banning 
after  a  fashion  that  would  infallibly  have  burned  her  two 
hundred  years  ago.  But  apart  from  any  adventitious 
associations  of  later  growth,  it  is  certain  that  a  very 
ancient  belief  gave  to  magic  the  power  of  imparting  life, 
or  the  semblance  of  it,  to  inanimate  things,  and  thus 
sometimes  making  servants  of  them.  The  wands  of  the 
Egyptian  magicians  were  turned  to  serpents.  Still 
nearer  to  the  purpose  is  the  capital  story  of  Lucian,  out 
of  which  Goethe  made  his  Zauberlehrling,  of  the  stick 
turned  water-carrier.  The  classical  theory  of  the  witch's 
flight  was  driven  to  no  such  vulgar  expedients,  the  oint 
ment  turning  her  into  a  bird  for  the  nonce,  as  in  Lucian 
and  Apuleius.  In  those  days,  too,  there  was  nothing 
known  of  any  camp-meeting  of  witches  and  wizards,  but 
each  sorceress  transformed  herself  that  she  might  fly  to 
her  paramour.  According  to  some  of  the  Scotch  stories, 
the  witch,  after  bestriding  her  broomstick,  must  repeat 


118  WITCHCRAFT. 

the  magic  formula,  Horse  and  Hattock !  The  flitting  of 
these  ill-omened  night-birds,  like  nearly  all  the  general 
superstitions  relating  to  witchcraft,  mingles  itself  and  is 
lost  in  a  throng  of  figures  more  august.*  Diana,  Bertha, 
Holda,  Abundia,  Befana,  once  beautiful  and  divine,  the 
bringers  of  blessing  while  men  slept,  became  demons 
haunting  the  drear  of  darkness  with  terror  and  ominous 
suggestion.  The  process  of  disenchantment  must  have 
been  a  long  one,  and  none  can  say  how  soon  it  became 
complete.  Perhaps  we  may  take  Heine's  word  for  it, 

that 

"  Genau  bci  Weibern 
Weiss  man  niemals  wo  der  Engel 
Aufhort  und  der  Teufel  anfangt." 

Once  goblinized,  Herodias  joins  them,  doomed  still  to 
bear  about  the  Baptist's  head ;  and  Woden,  who,  first 
losing  his  identity  in  the  Wild  Huntsman,  sinks  by  de 
grees  into  the  mere  spook  of  a  Suabian  baron,  sinfully 
fond  of  field-sports,  and  therefore  punished  with  an 
eternal  phantasm  of  them,  "  the  hunter  and  the  deer  a 
shade."  More  and  more  vulgarized,  the  infernal  train 
snatches  up  and  sweeps  along  with  it  every  lawless  shape 
and  wild  conjecture  of  distempered  fancy,  streaming 
away  at  last  into  a  comet's  tail  of  wild-haired  hags, 
eager  with  unnatural  hate  and  more  unnatural  lust, 
the  nightmare  breed  of  some  exorcist's  or  inquisitor's 
surfeit,  whose  own  lie  has  turned  upon  him  in  sleep. 

As  it  is  painfully  interesting  to  trace  the  gradual  de 
generation  of  a  poetic  faith  into  the  ritual  of  unimagina 
tive  Tupperism,  so  it  is  amusing  to  see  pedantry  cling 
ing  faithfully  to  the  traditions  of  its  prosaic  nature,  and 
holding  sacred  the  dead  shells  that  once  housed  a  moral 
symbol.  What  a  divine  thing  the  outside  always  has 
been  and  continues  to  be  !  And  how  the  cast  clothes  of 
the  mind  continue  always  to  be  in  fashion  !  We  turn 
*  See  Grimm's  D.  M.,  under  Hexenfart,  Wutendes  Heer,  &c. 


WITCHCRAFT.  119 

our  coats  without  changing  the  cut  of  them.  But  was 
it  possible  for  a  man  to  change  not  only  his  skin  but  his 
nature  1  Were  there  such  things  as  versipelles,  lycan- 
thropi,  werwolfs,  and  loupgarous  ?  In  the  earliest  ages 
science  was  poetry,  as  in  the  later  poetry  has  become 
science.  The  phenomena  of  nature,  imaginatively  rep 
resented,  were  not  long  in  becoming  myths.  These  the 
primal  poets  reproduced  again  'as  symbols,  no  longer  of 
physical,  but  of  moral  truths.  By  and  by  the  profes 
sional  poets,  in  search  of  a  subject,  are  struck  by  the 
fund  of  picturesque  material  lying  unused  in  them,  and 
-work  them  up  once  more  as  narratives,  with  appropriate 
personages  and  decorations.  Thence  they  take  the  further 
downward  step  into  legend,  and  from  that  to  supersti 
tion.  How  many  metamorphoses  between  the  elder 
Edda  and  the  Nibelungen,  between  Arcturus  and  the 
"  Idyls  of  the  King "  !  Let  a  good,  thorough-paced 
proser  get  hold  of  one  of  these  stories,  and  he  carefully 
desiccates  them  of  whatever  fancy  may  be  left,  till  he 
has  reduced  them  to  the  proper  dryness  of  fact.  King 
Lycaon,  grandson  by  the  spindleside  of  Oceanus,  after 
passing  through  all  the  stages  I  have  mentioned,  becomes 
the  ancestor  of  the  werwolf.  Ovid  is  put  upon  the  stand 
as  a  witness,  and  testifies  to  the  undoubted  fact  of  the 
poor  monarch's  own  metamorphosis  :  — 

"  Terrritus  ipse  fugit,  nactusque  silentia  ruris 
Exululat,  frustraquo  loqui  conatur." 

Does  any  one  still  doubt  that  men  may  be  changed 
into  beasts  1  Call  Lucian,  call  Apuleius,  call  Homer, 
whose  story  of  the  companions  of  Ulysses  made  swine  of 
by  Circe,  says  Bodin,  n'est  pas  fable.  If  that  arch-patron 
of  sorcerers,  Wierus,  is  still  unconvinced,  and  pronoun 
ces  the  whole  thing  a  delusion  of  diseased  imagination, 
what  does  he  say  to  Nebuchadnezzar  1  Nay,  let  St.  Aus 
tin  be  subpoenaed,  who  declares  that  "  in  his  time  among 


120  WITCHCRAFT. 

the  Alps  sorceresses  were  common,  who,  by  making 
travellers  eat  of  a  certain  cheese,  changed  them  into 
beasts  of  burden  and  then  back  again  into  men."  Too 
confiding  tourist,  beware  of  Gruyere,  especially  at  sup 
per  !  Then  there  was  the  Philosopher  Ammonius,  whose 
lectures  were  constantly  attended  by  an  ass,  —  a  phe 
nomenon  not  without  parallel  in  more  recent  times,  and 
all  the  more  credible  to  Bodin,  who  had  been  professor 
of  civil  law. 

In  one  case  we  have  fortunately  the  evidence  of  the 
f  ass  himself.  In  Germany,  two  witches  who  kept  an  inn  \ 
.  made  an  ass  of  a  young  actor,  —  not  always  a  very  pro-  % 
digious  transformation  it  will  be  thought  by  those  famil 
iar  with  the  stage.  In  his  new  shape  he  drew  customers 
by  his  amusing  tricks,  —  voluptates  mille  viatoribus  exhi- 
bebat.  But  one  day  making  his  escape  (having  overheard 
the  secret  from  his  mistresses),  he  plunged  into  the  wa 
ter  and  was  disasinized  to  the  extent  of  recovering  his 
original  shape.  "  Id  Petrus  Damianus,  vir  sua  setate  in 
ter  primes  numerandus,  cum  rem  sciscitatus  est  diligen- 
tissime  ex  hero,  ex  asino,  ex  mulieribus  sagis  confessis 
factum,  Leoni  VII.  Papse  narravit,  et  postquam  diu  in 
utrainque  partem  coram  Papa  fuit  disputatum,  hoc  tandem 
posse  fieri  fuit  constitum."  Bodin  must  have  been  de 
lighted  with  this  story,  though  perhaps  as  a  Protestant  he 
might  have  vilipended  the  infallible  decision  of  the  Pope 
in  its  favor.  As  for  lycanthropy,  that  was  too  common 
in  his  own  time  to  need  any  confirmation.  It  was  no 
torious  to  all  men.  "  In  Livonia,  during  the  latter  part 
of  December,  a  villain  goes  about  summoning  the  sor 
cerers  to  meet  at  a  certain  place,  and  if  they  fail,  the 
Devil  scourges  them  thither  with  an  iron  'rod,  and  that 
so  sharply  that  the  marks  of  it  remain  upon  them. 
Their  captain  goes  before  ;  and  they,  to  the  number  of 
several  thousands,  follow  him  across  a  river,  which 


WITCHCRAFT.  121 

passed,  they  change  into  wolves,  and,  casting  themselves 
upon  men  and  flocks,  do  all  manner  of  damage."  This 
we  have  on  the  authority  of  Melancthon's  son-in-law, 
Gaspar  Peucerus.  Moreover,  many  books  published  in 
Germany  affirm  "  that  one  of  the  greatest  kings  in 
Christendom,  not  long  since  dead,  was  often  changed  into 
a  wolf."  But  what  need  of  words  1  The  conclusive 
proof  remains,  that  many  in  our  own  day,  being  put  to 
the  torture,  have  confessed  the  fact,  and  been  burned  alive 
'  accordingly.  The  maintainers  of  the  reality  of  witchcraft 
in  the  next  century  seem  to  have  dropped  the  iverwolf  by 
common  consent,  though  supported  by  the  same  kind 
of  evidence  they  relied  on  in  other  matters,  namely, 
that  of  ocular  witnesses,  the  confession  of  the  accused, 
and  general  notoriety.  So  lately  as  1765  the  French 
peasants  believed  the  "  wild  beast  of  the  Gevaudan  "  to 
be  a  loupgarou,  and  that,  I  think,  is  his  last  appear 
ance. 

The  particulars  of  the  concubinage  of  witches  with 
their  familiars  were  discussed  with  a  relish  and  a  filthy 
minuteness  worthy  of  Sanchez.  Could  children  be  born 
of  these  devilish  amours  1  Of  course  they  could,  said 
one  party ;  are  there  not  plenty  of  cases  in  authentic 
history  1  Who  was  the  father  of  Romulus  and  Remus  1 
nay,  not  so  very  long  ago,  of  Merlin  1  Another  party 
denied  the  possibility  of  the  thing  altogether.  Among 
these  was  Luther,  who  declared  the  children  either  to  be 
supposititious,  or  else  mere  imps,  disguised  as  innocent 
sucklings,  and  known  as  Wechselkinder,  or  changelings, 
who  were  common  enough,  as  everybody  must  be  aware. 
Of  the  intercourse  itself  Luther  had  no  doubts.*  A 

*  Some  Catholics,  indeed,  affirmed  that  he  himself  was  the  son  of  a 
demon  who  lodged  in  his  father's  house  under  the  semblance  of  a 
merchant.     Wierus  says  that  a  bishop  preached  to  that  effect  in  1565, 
and  gravely  refutes  the  story. 
6 


122  WITCHCRAFT. 

third  party  took  a  middle  ground,  and  believed  that  ver 
min  and  toads  might  be  the  offspring  of  such  amours. 
And  how  did  the  Demon,  a  mere  spiritual  essence,  con 
trive  himself  a  body  ?  Some  would  have  it  that  he  en 
tered  into  dead  bodies,  by  preference,  of  course,  those  of 
sorcerers.  It  is  plain,  from  the  confession  of  De  la  Rue, 
that  this  was  the  theory  of  his  examiners.  This  also 
had  historical  evidence  in  its  favor.  There  was  the  well- 
known  leading  case  of  the  Bride  of  Corinth,  for  example. 
And  but  yesterday,  as  it  were,  at  Crossen  in  Silesia,  did ' 
not  Christopher  Monig,  an  apothecary's  servant,  come 
back  after  being  buried,  and  do  duty,  as  if  nothing  par 
ticular  had  happened,  putting  up  prescriptions  as  usual, 
and  "pounding  drugs  in  the  mortar  with  a  mighty 
noise "  1  Apothecaries  seem  to  have  been  special  vic 
tims  of  these  Satanic  pranks,  for  another  appeared  at 
Eeichenbach  not  long  before,  affirming  that,  "  he  had 
poisoned  several  men  with  his  drugs,"  which  certainlv 
gives  an  air  of  truth  to  the  story.  Accordingly  the 
Devil  is  represented  as  being  unpleasantly  cold  to  the 
touch.  "  Caietan  escrit  qu'une  sorciere  demanda  un 
iour  au  diable  pourquoy  il  ne  se  rechauifoit,  qui  fist  re 
sponse  qu'il  faisoit  ce  qu'il  pouuoit."  Poor  Devil !  But 
there  are  cases  in  which  the  demon  is  represented  as  so 
hot  that  his  grasp  left  a  scared  spot  as  black  as  charcoal. 
Perhaps  some  of  them  came  from  the  torrid  zone  of  their 
broad  empire,  and  others  from  the  thrilling  regions  of 
thick-ribbed  ice.  Those  who  were  not  satisfied  with  the 
dead-body  theory  contented  themselves,  like  Dr.  More, 
with  that  of  "  adscititious  particles,"  which  has,  to  be 
sure,  a  more  metaphysical  and  scholastic  flavor  about  it. 
That  the  demons  really  came,  either  corporeally  or 
through  some  diabolic  illusion  that  amounted  to  the 
same  thing,  and  that  the  witch  devoted  herself  to  him 
body  and  soul,  scarce  anybody  was  bold  enough  to  doubt. 


WITCHCRAFT.  123 

To  these  familiars  their  venerable  paramours  gave  en 
dearing  nicknames,  such  as  My  little  Master,  or  My  dear 
Martin,  —  the  latter,  probably,  after  the  heresy  of 
Luther,  and  when  the  rack  was  popish.  The  famous 
witch-finder  Hopkins  enables  us  to  lengthen  the  list  con 
siderably.  One  witch  whom  he  convicted,  after  being 
"  kept  from  sleep  two  or  three  nights,"  called  in  five  of 
her  devilish  servitors.  The  first  was  "  Holt,  who  came 
in  like  a  white  kitling  "  ;  the  second  "  Jarmara,  like  a  fat 
spaniel  without  any  legs  at  all "  ;  the  third,  "  Vinegar 
Tom,  who  was  like  a  long-tailed  greyhound  with  an  head 
like  an  oxe,  with  a  long  tail  and  broad  eyes,  who,  when 
this  discoverer  spoke  to  and  bade  him  to  the  place  pro 
vided  for  him  and  his  angells,  immediately  transformed 
himself  into  the  shape  of  a  child  of  foure  yeares  old, 
without  a  head,  and  gave  half  a  dozen  turnes  about  the 
house  and  vanished  at  the  doore  "  ;  the  fourth,  "  Sack 
and  Sugar,  like  a  black  rabbet "  ;  the  fifth,  "  News,  like  a 
polcat."  Other  names  of  his  finding  were  Elemauzer, 
Pywacket,  Peck-in-the-Crown,  Grizzel,  and  Greedygut, 
"  which,"  he  adds,  "  no  mortal  could  invent."  The  name 
of  Robin,  which  we  met  with  in  the  confession  of  Alice 
Duke,  has,  perhaps,  wider  associations  than  the  woman 
herself  dreamed  of;  for,  through  Robin  des  Bois  and 
Robin  Hood,  it  may  be  another  of  those  scattered  traces 
that  lead  us  back  to  Woden.  Probably,  however,  it  is 
only  our  old  friend  Robin  Goodfellow,  whose  namesake 
Knecht  Ruprecht  makes  such  a  figure  in  the  German 
fairy  mythology.  Possessed  persons  called  in  higher 
agencies,  —  Thrones,  Dominations,  Princedoms,  Powers ; 
and  among  the  witnesses  against  Urbain  Grandier  we 
find  the  names  of  Leviathan,  Behemoth,  Isaacarum,  Be- 
laam,  Asmodeus,  and  Beherit,  who  spoke  French  very 
well,  but  were  remarkably  poor  Latinists,  knowing,  in 
deed,  almost  as  little  of  the  language  as  if  their  youth 


124  WITCHCRAFT. 

had  been  spent  in  writing  Latin  verses.*  A  shrewd 
Scotch  physician  tried  them  with  Gaelic,  but  they  could 
make  nothing  of  it. 

It  was  only  when  scepticism  had  begun  to  make  itself 
uncomfortably  inquisitive,  that  the  Devil  had  any  diffi 
culty  in  making  himself  visible  and  even  palpable.  In 
simpler  times,  demons  would  almost  seem  to  have  made 
no  inconsiderable  part  of  the  population.  Trithemius 
tells  of  one  who  served  as  cook  to  the  Bishop  of  Hilde- 
sheim  (one  shudders  to  think  of  the  school  where  he  had 
graduated  as  Cordon  bleu),  and  who  delectebatur  esse 
cum  hominibus,  loquens,  interrogans,  respondens  famili- 
ariter  omnibus,  aliquando  visibiliter,  aliquando  invisibili- 
ter  apparens.  This  last  feat  of  "  appearing  invisibly  " 
would  have  been  worth  seeing.  In  1554,  the  Devil  came 
of  a  Christmas  eve  to  Lawrence  Doner,  a  parish  priest 
in  Saxony,  and  asked  to  be  confessed.  "  Admissus, 
horrendas  adversus  Christum  filium  Dei  blasphemias 
evomuit.  Verum  cum  virtute  verbi  Dei  a  parocho  victus 
esset,  intolerabili  post  se  relicto  fcetore  abiit."  Splen 
didly  dressed,  with  two  companions,  he  frequented  an 
honest  man's  house  at  Rothenberg.  He  brought  with 
him  a  piper  or  fiddler,  and  contrived  feasts  and  dances 
under  pretext  of  wooing  the  goodman's  daughter.  He 
boasted  that  he  was  a  foreign  nobleman  of  immense 
wealth,  and,  for  a  time,  was  as  successful  as  an  Italian 
courier  has  been  known  to  be  at  one  of  our  fashionable 
watering-places.  But  the  importunity  of  the  guest  and 
his  friends  at  length  displicuit  patrifamilias,  who  accord- 

*  Melancthon,  however,  used  to  tell  of  a  possessed  girl  in  Italy  who 
knew  no  Latin,  but  the  Devil  in  her,  being  asked  by  Bonamico,  a 
Bolognese  professor,  what  was  the  best  verse  in  Virgil,  answered  at 
once : — 

"  Discite  justitiam  moniti,  et  non  temnere  divos,"  — 
a  somewhat  remarkable  concession  on  the  part  of  a  fallen  angel. 


WITCHCRAFT.  125 

ingly  one  evening  invited  a  minister  of  the  Word  to  meet 
them  at  supper,  and  entered  upon  pious  discourse  with 
him  from  the  word  of  God.  Wherefore,  seeking  other 
matter  of  conversation,  they  said  that  there  were  many  fa 
cetious  things  more  suitable  to  exhilarate  the  supper-table 
than  the  interpretation  of  Holy  Writ,  and  begged  that 
they  might  be  no  longer  bored  with  Scripture.  Thor 
oughly  satisfied  by  their  singular  way  of  thinking  that 
his  guests  were  diabolical,  paterfamilias  cries  out  in 
Latin  worthy  of  Father  Tom,  "  Apagite,  vos  scelerati 
nebulones  !  "  This  said,  the  tartarean  impostor  and  his 
companions  at  once  vanished  with  a  great  tumult,  leav 
ing  behind  them  a  most  unpleasant  foetor  and  the  bodies 
of  three  men  who  had  been  hanged.  Perhaps  if  the 
clergyman-cure  were  faithfully  tried  upon  the  next  for 
tune-hunting  count  with  a  large  real  estate  in  whiskers 
and  an  imaginary  one  in  Barataria,  he  also  might  vanish, 
leaving  a  strong  smell  of  barber's-shop,  and  taking  with 
him  a  body  that  will  come  to  the  gallows  in  due  time. 
It  were  worth  trying.  Luther  tells  of  a  demon  who 
served  as  famulus  in  a  monastery,  fetching  beer  for  the 
monks,  and  always  insisting  on  honest  measure  for  his 
money.  There  is  one  case  on  record  where  the  Devil 
appealed  to  the  courts  for  protection  in  his  rights.  A 
monk,  going  to  visit  his  mistress,  fell  dead  as  he  was 
passing  a  bridge.  The  good  and  bad  angel  came  to  liti 
gation  about  his  soul.  The  case  was  referred  by  agree 
ment  to  Richard,  Duke  of  Normandy,  who  decided  that 
the  monk's  body  should  be  carried  back  to  the  bridge, 
and  his  soul  restored  to  it  by  the  claimants.  If  he  per 
severed  in  keeping  his  assignation,  the  Devil  was  to  have 
him,  if  not,  then  the  Angel.  The  monk,  thus  put  upon 
his  guard,  turns  back  and  saves  his  soul,  such  as  it  was.* 

*  This  story  seems  mediaeval  and  Gothic  enough,  but  is  hardly  more 
so  than  bringing  the  case  of  the  Furies  v.  Orestes  before  the  Areopagus, 


126  WITCHCRAFT. 

Perhaps  the  most  impudent  thing  the  Devil  ever  did  was 
to  open  a  school  of  magic  in  Toledo.  The  ceremony  of 
graduation  in  this  institution  was  peculiar.  The  senior 
class  had  all  to  run  through  a  narrow  cavern,  and  the 
venerable  president  was  entitled  to  the  hindmost,  if  he 
could  catch  him.  Sometimes  it  happened  that  he  caught 
only  his  shadow,  and  in  that  case  the  man  who  had  been 
nimble  enough  to  do  what  Goethe  pronounces  impossible, 
became  the  most  profound  magician  of  his  year.  Hence 
our  proverb  of  the  Devil  take  the  hindmost,  and  Chamisso's 
story  of  Peter  Schlemihl. 

There  is  no  end  of  such  stories.  They  were  repeated 
and  believed  by  the  gravest  and  wisest  men  down  to  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  century  ;  they  were  received  un- 
doubtingly  by  the  great  majority  down  to  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth.  The  Devil  was  an  easy  way  of  accounting 
for  what  was  beyond  men's  comprehension.  He  was  the 
simple  and  satisfactory  answer  to  all  the  conundrums  of 
Nature.  And  what  the  Devil  had  not  time  to  bestow  his 
personal  attention  upon,  the  witch  was  always  ready  to  do 
for  him.  Was  a  doctor  at  a  loss  about  a  case  1  How 
could  he  save  his  credit  more  cheaply  than  by  pronoun 
cing  it  witchcraft,  and  turning  it  over  to  the  parson  to  be 
exorcised  1  Did  a  man's  cow  die  suddenly,  or  his  horse 
fall  lame  1  Witchcraft !  Did  one  of  those  writers  of 
controversial  quartos,  heavy  as  the  stone  of  Diomed,  feel 
a  pain  in  the  small  of  his  back  1  Witchcraft !  Unhap 
pily  there  were  always  ugly  old  women ;  and  if  you 
crossed  them  in  any  way,  or  did  them  a  wrong,  they 
were  given  to  scolding  and  banning.  If,  within  a  year 

and  putting  Apollo  in  the  witness-box,  as  JSschylus  has  done.  The 
classics,  to  be  sure,  are  always  so  classic !  In  the  Eumenides,  Apollo 
takes  the  place  of  the  good  angel.  And  why  not  ?  For  though  a  de 
mon,  and  a  lying  one,  Ite  has  crept  in  to  the  calendar  under  his  other 
name  ,of  Helios  as  St.  Helias.  Could  any  of  his  oracles  have  foretold 
this? 


WITCHCRAFT.  127 

or  two  after,  anything  should  happen  to  you  or  yours, 
why,  of  course,  old  Mother  Bombie  or  Goody  Blake  must 
be  at  the  bottom  of  it.  For  it  was  perfectly  well  known 
that  there  were  witches,  (does  not  God's  law  say  ex 
pressly,  "  Suffer  not  a  witch  to  live  1 ")  and  that  they  could 
cast  a  spell  by  the  mere  glance  of  their  eyes,  could  cause 
you  to  pine  away  by  melting  a  waxen  image,  could  give 
you  a  pain  wherever  they  liked  by  sticking  pins  into  the 
same,  could  bring  sickness  into  your  house  or  into  your 
barn  by  hiding  a  Devil's  powder  under  the  threshold  ; 
and  who  knows  what  else  1  Worst  of  all,  they  could 
send  a  demon  into  your  body,  who  would  cause  you  to 
vomit  pins,  hair,  pebbles,  knives,  —  indeed,  almost  any 
thing  short  of  a  cathedral,  —  without  any  fault  of  yours, 
utter  through  you  the  most  impertinent  things  verbi 
ministro,  and,  in  short,  make  you  the  most  important  per 
sonage  in  the  parish  for  the  time  being.  Meanwhile,  you 
were  an  object  of  condolence  and  contribution  to  the 
whole  neighborhood.  What  wonder  if  a  lazy  apprentice 
or  servant-maid  (Bekker  gives  several  instances  of  the 
kind  detected  by  him)  should  prefer  being  possessed, 
with  its  attendant  perquisites,  to  drudging  from  morning 
till  night  1  And  to  any  one  who  has  observed  how  com 
mon  a  thing  in  certain  states  of  mind  self-connivance  is, 
and  how  near  it  is  to  self-deception,  it  will  not  be  sur 
prising  that  some  were,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  really 
possessed.  Who  has  never  felt  an  almost  irresistible 
temptation,  and  seemingly  not  self-originated,  to  let  him 
self  go  1  to  let  his  mind  gallop  and  kick  and  curvet  and 
roll  like  a  horse  turned  loose  ?  in  short,  as  we  Yankees 
say,  "to  speak  out  in  meeting"'?  Who  never  had  it 
suggested  to  him  by  the  fiend  to  break  in  at  a  funeral 
with  a  real  character  of  the  deceased,  instead  of  that 
Mrs.  Grundyfied  view  of  him  which  the  clergyman  is  so 
painfully  elaborating  in  his  prayer  1  Remove  the  pendu- 


128  WITCHCRAFT. 

him  of  conventional  routine,  and  the  mental  machinery 
runs  on  with  a  whir  that  gives  a  delightful  excitement 
to  sluggish  temperaments,  and  is,  perhaps,  the  natural 
relief  of  highly  nervous  organizations.  The  tyrant  Will 
is  dethroned,  and  the  sceptre  snatched  by  his  frolic  sis 
ter  Whim.  This  state  of  things,  if  continued,  must  be 
come  either  insanity  or  imposture.  But  who  can  say 
precisely  where  consciousness  ceases  and  a  kind  of  auto 
matic  movement  begins,  the  result  of  over-excitement  ] 
The  subjects  of  these  strange  disturbances  have  been 
almost  always  young  women  or  girls  at  a  critical  period 
of  their  development.  Many  of  the  most  remarkable 
cases  have  occurred  in  convents,  and  both  there  and  else 
where,  as  in  other  kinds  of  temporary  nervous  derange 
ment,  have  proved  contagious.  Sometimes,  as  in  the 
affair  of  the  nuns  of  Loudon,  there  seems  every  reason 
to  suspect  a  conspiracy  ;  but  I  am  not  quite  ready  to  say 
that  Grandier  was  the  only  victim,  and  that  some  of  the 
energumens  were  not  unconscious  tools  in  the  hands  of 
priestcraft  and  revenge.  One  thing  is  certain  :  that  in 
the  dioceses  of  humanely  sceptical  prelates  the  cases  of 
possession  were  sporadic  only,  and  either  cured,  or  at 
least  hindered  from  becoming  epidemic,  by  episcopal 
mandate.  Cardinal  Mazarin,  when  Papal  vice-legate  at 
Avignon,  made  an  end  of  the  trade  of  exorcism  within 
his  government. 

But  scepticism,  down  to  the  beginning  of  the  eigh 
teenth  century,  was"  the  exception.  Undoubting  and 
often  fanatical  belief  was  the  rule.  It  is  easy  enough  to 
be  astonished  at  it,  still  easier  to  misapprehend  it.  How 
could  sane  men  have  been  deceived  by  such  nursery- 
tales  1  Still  more,  how  could  they  have  suffered  them 
selves,  on  what  seems  to  us  such  puerile  evidence,  to 
consent  to  such  atrocious  cruelties,  nay,  tp  urge  them 
on  1  As  to  the  belief,  we  should  remember  that  the  hu- 


WITCHCRAFT.  129 

man  mind,  when  it  sails  by  dead  reckoning,  without  the 
possibility  of  a  fresh  observation,  perhaps  without  the 
instruments  necessary  to  take  one,  will  sometimes  bring 
up  in  very  strange  latitudes.  Do  we  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  then,  always  strike  out  boldly  into  the  unland- 
marked  deep  of  speculation  and  shape  our  courses  by  the 
stars,  or  do  we  not  sometimes  con  our  voyage  by  what 
seem  to  us  the  firm  and  familiar  headlands  of  truth, 
planted  by  God  himself,  but  which  may,  after  all,  be  no 
more  than  an  insubstantial  mockery  of  cloud  or  airy 
juggle  of  mirage  1  The  refraction  of  our  own  atmos 
phere  has  by  no  means  made  an  end  of  its  tricks  with 
the  appearances  of  things  in  our  little  world  of  thought. 
The  men  of  that  day  believed  what  they  saw,  or,  as  our 
generation  would  put  it,  what  they  thought  they  saw. 
Very  good.  The  vast  majority  of  men  believe,  andi 
always  will  believe,  on  the  same  terms.  When  one 
comes  along  who  can  partly  distinguish  the  thing  seen 
from  that  travesty  or  distortion  of  it  which  the  thou 
sand  disturbing  influences  within  him  and  without  him 
would  make  him  see,  we  call  him  a  great  philosopher. 
All  our  intellectual  charts  are  engraved  according  to  his 
observations,  and  we  steer  contentedly  by  them  till  some 
man  whose  brain  rests  on  a  still  more  immovable  basis 
corrects  them  still  further  by  eliminating  what  his  pred 
ecessor  thought  he  saw.  We  must  account  for  many 
former  aberrations  in  the  moral  world  by  the  presence 
of  more  or  less  nebulous  bodies  ."  a  certain  gravity 
which  modified  the  actual  position  of  truth  in  its  rela 
tion  to  the  mind,  and  which,  if  they  have  now  vanished, 
have  made  way,  perhaps,  for  others  whose  influence  will 
in  like  manner  be  allowed  for  by  posterity  in  their  esti 
mate  of  us.  In  matters  of  faith,  astrology  has  by  no 
means  yet  gbTen  place  to  astronomy,  nor  alchemy  be 
come  chemistry,  which  knows  what  to  seek  for  and  how 
6*  i 


130  WITCHCRAFT. 

to  find  it.  In  the  days  of  witchcraft  all  science  was  still 
in  the  condition  of  May-be ;  it  is  only  just  bringing 
itself  to  find  a  higher  satisfaction  in  the  imperturbable 
Must-be  of  law.  We  should  remember  that  what  we  call 
natural  may  have  a  very  different  meaning  for  one  gen 
eration  from  that  which  it  has  for  another.  The  boun 
dary  between  the  "  other  "  world  and  this  ran  till  very 
lately,  and  at  some  points  runs  still,  through  a  vast 
tract  of  unexplored  border-land  of  very  uncertain  tenure. 
Even  now  the  territory  which  Reason  holds  firmly  as 
Lord  Warden  of  the  marches  during  daylight,  is  subject 
to  sudden  raids  of  Imagination  by  night.  But  physical 
darkness  is  not  the  only  one  that  lends  opportunity  to 
such  incursions;  and  in  midsummer  1692,  when  Eben- 
ezer  Bapson,  looking  out  of  the  fort  at  Gloucester  in 
broad  day,  saw  shapes  of  men,  sometimes  in  blue  coats 
like  Indians,  sometimes  in  white  waistcoats  like  French 
men,  it  seemed  more  natural  to  most  men  that  they 
should  be  spectres  than  men  of  flesh  and  blood.  Grant 
ing  the  assumed  premises,  as  nearly  every  one  did,  the 
syllogism  was  perfect. 

So  much  for  the  apparent  reasonableness  of  the  belief, 
since  every  man's  logic  is  satisfied  with  a  legitimate  de 
duction  from  his  own  postulates.  Causes  for  the  cruelty 
to  which  the  belief  led  are  not  further  to  seek.  Toward 
no  crime  have  men  shown  themselves  so  cold-bloodedly 
cruel  as  in  punishing  difference  of  belief,  and  the  first 
systematic  persecutions  for  witchcraft  began  with  the  in 
quisitors  in  the  South  of  France  in  the  thirteenth  cen 
tury.  It  was  then  and  there  that  the  charge  of  sexual 
uncleanness  with  demons  was  first  devised.  Persecuted 
heretics  would  naturally  meet  in  darkness  and  secret, 
and  it  was  easy  to  blacken  such  meetings  with  the  accu 
sation  of  deeds  so  foul  as  to  shun  the  light  of  day  and 
the  eves  of  men.  Thev  met  to  renounce  God  and  wor- 


WITCHCRAFT.  131 

ship  the  Devil.  But  this  was  not  enough.  To  excite 
popular  hatred  and  keep  it  fiercely  alive,  fear  must  be 
mingled  with  it ;  and  this  end  was  reached  by  making 
the  heretic  also  a  sorcerer,  who,  by  the  Devil's  help,  could 
and  would  work  all  manner  of  fiendish  mischief.  When 
by  this  means  the  belief  in  a  league  between  witch  and 
demon  had  become  firmly  established,  witchcraft  grew 
into  a  well-defined  crime,  hateful  enough  in  itself  to  fur 
nish  pastime  for  the  torturer  and  food  for  the  fagot.  In 
the  fifteenth  century,  witches  were  burned  by  thousands, 
and  it  may  well  be  doubted  if  all  paganism  together  was 
ever  guilty  of  so  many  human  sacrifices  in  the  same 
space  of  time.  In  the  sixteenth,  these  holocausts  were 
appealed  to  as  conclusive  evidence  of  the  reality  of  the 
crime,  terror  was  again  aroused,  the  more  vindictive  that 
its  sources  were  so  vague  and  intangible,  and  cruelty  was 
the  natural  consequence.  Nothing  but  an  abject  panic, 
in  which  the  whole  use  of  reason,  except  as  a  mill  to 
grind  out  syllogisms,  was  altogether  lost,  will  account  for 
some  chapters  in  Bodin's  Demonomanie.  Men  were  sur 
rounded  by  a  forever-renewed  conspiracy  whose  ramifica 
tions  they  could  not  trace,  though  they  might  now  and 
then  lay  hold  on  one  of  its  associates.  Protestant  and 
Catholic  might  agree  in  nothing  else,  but  they  were 
unanimous  in  their  dread  of  this  invisible  enemy.  If 
fright  could  turn  civilized  Englishmen  into  savage  Iro- 
quois  during  the  imagined  negro  plots  of  New  York  in 
1741  and  of  Jamaica  in  1865,  if  the  same  invisible  om 
nipresence  of  Fenianism  shall  be  able  to  work  the  same 
miracle,  as  it  perhaps  will,  next  year  in  England  itself, 
why  need  we  be  astonished  that  the  blows  should  have 
f<il Ion  upon  many  an  innocent  head  when  men  were 
striking  wildly  in  self-defence,  as  they  supposed,  against 
the  unindictable  Powers  of  Darkness,  against  a  plot 
which  could  be  carried  on  by  human  agents,  but  with 


132  WITCHCRAFT." 

invisible  accessories  and  by  supernatural  means  1  In 
the  seventeenth  century  an  element  was  added  which 
pretty  well  supplied  the  place  of  heresy  as  a  sharpener 
of  hatred  and  an  awakener  of  indefinable  suspicion. 
Scepticism  had  been  born  into  the  world,  almost  more 
hateful  than  heresy,  because  it  had  the  manners  of 
good  society  and  contented  itself  with  a  smile,  a  shrug, 
an  almost  imperceptible  lift  of  the  eyebrow,  —  a  kind 
of  reasoning  especially  exasperating  to  disputants  of 
the  old  school,  who  still  cared  about  victory,  even 
when  they  did  not  about  the  principles  involved  in  the 
debate. 

The  Puritan  emigration  to  New  England  took  place  at 
a  time  when  the  belief  in  diabolic  agency  had  been 
hardly  called  in  question,  much  less  shaken.  The  early 
adventurers  brought  it  with  them  to  a  country  in  every 
way  fitted,  not  only  to  keep  it  alive,  but  to  feed  it  into 
greater  vigor.  The  solitude  of  the  wilderness  (and  soli 
tude  alone,  by  dis-furnishing  the  brain  of  its  common 
place  associations,  makes  it  an  apt  theatre  for  the  delu 
sions  of  imagination),  the  nightly  forest  noises,  the 
glimpse,  perhaps,  through  the  leaves,  of  a  painted  sav 
age  face,  uncertain  whether  of  redman  or  Devil,  but 
more  likely  of  the  latter,  above  all,  that  measureless 
mystery  of  the  unknown  and  conjectural  stretching  away 
illimitable  on  all  sides  and  vexing  the  mind,  somewhat 
as  physical  darkness  does,  with  intimation  and  misgiving, 
—  under  all  these  influences,  whatever  seeds  of  super 
stition  had  in  any  way  got  over  from  the  Old  World 
would  find  an  only  too  congenial  soil  in  the  New.  The 
leaders  of  that  emigration  believed  and  taught  that  de 
mons  loved  to  dwell  in  waste  and  wooded  places,  that 
the  Indians  did  homage  to  the  bodily  presence  of  the 
Devil,  and  that  he  was  especially  enraged  against  those 
who  had  planted  an  outpost  of  the  true  faith  upon  this 


WITCHCRAFT.  133 

continent  hitherto  all  his  own.  In  the  third  generation 
of  the  settlement,  in  proportion  as  living  faith  decayed, 
the  clergy  insisted  all  the  more  strongly  on  the  tradi 
tions  of  the  elders,  and  as  they  all  placed  the  sources  of 
goodness  and  religion  in  some  inaccessible  Other  World 
rather  than  in  the  soul  of  man  himself,  they  clung  to 
every  shred  of  the  supernatural  as  proof  of  the  existence 
of  that  Other  World,  and  of  its  interest  in  the  affairs  of 
this.  They  had  the  countenance  of  all  the  great  theo 
logians,  Catholic  as  well  as  Protestant,  of  the  leaders  of 
the  Reformation,  and  in  their  own  day  of  such  men  as 
More  and  Glanvil  and  Baxter.*  If  to  all  these  causes, 
more  or  less  operative  in  1692,  we  add  the  harassing 
excitement  of  an  Indian  war  (urged  on  by  Satan  in  his 
hatred  of  the  churches),  with  its  daily  and  nightly  ap 
prehensions  and  alarms,  we  shall  be  less  astonished  that 
the  delusion  in  Salem  Village  rose  so  high  than  that  it 
subsided  so  soon. 

I  have  already  said  that  it  was  religious  antipathy  or 
clerical  interest  that  first  made  heresy  and  witchcraft 
identical  and  cast  them  into  the  same  expiatory  fire. 
The  invention  was  a  Catholic  one,  but  it  is  plain  that 
Protestants  soon  learned  its  value  and  were  not  slow  in 
making  it  a  plague  to  the  inventor.  It  was  not  till  after 
the  Reformation  that  there  was  any  systematic  hunting 
out  of  witches  in  England.  Then,  no  doubt,  the  inno- 

*  Mr.  Leckie,  in  his  admirable  chapter  on  Witchcraft,  gives  a  little 
more  credit  to  the  enlightenment  of  the  Church  of  England  in  this 
matter  than  it  would  seem  fairly  to  deserve.  More  and  Glanvil  were 
faithful  sons  of  the  Church;  and  if  the  persecution  of  witches  was  es 
pecially  rife  during  the  ascendency  of  the  Puritans,  it  was  because  they 
happened  to  be  in  power  while  there  was  a  reaction  against  Sadducism. 
All  the  convictions  were  under  the  statute  of  James  I.,  who  was  no 
Puritan.  After  the  restoration,  the  reaction  was  the  other  way,  and 
Hobbism  became  the  fashion.  It  is  more  philosophical  to  say  that  the 
age  believes  this  and  that,  than  that  the  particular  men  who  live  in  it 
do  so. 


134  WITCHCRAFT. 

cent  charms  and  rhyming  prayers  of  the  old  religion 
were  regarded  as  incantations,  and  twisted  into  evidence 
against  miserable  beldames  who  mumbled  over  in  their 
dotage  what  they  had  learned  at  their  mother's  knee. 
It  is  plain,  at  least,  that  this  was  one  of  Agnes  Simp 
son's  crimes. 

But  as  respects  the  frivolity  of  the  proof  adduced, 
there  was  nothing  to  choose  between  Catholic  and  Prot 
estant.  Out  of  civil  and  canon  law  a  net  was  woven 
through  whose  meshes  there  was  no  escape,  and  into  it 
the  victims  were  driven  by  popular  clamor.  Suspicion 
of  witchcraft  was  justified  by  general  report,  by  the  ill- 
looks  of  the  suspected,  by  being  silent  when  accused,  by 
her  mother's  having  been  a  witch,  by  flight,  by  exclaim 
ing  when  arrested,  /  am  lost !  by  a  habit  of  using  im 
precations,  by  the  evidence  of  two  witnesses,  by  the 
accusation  of  a  man  on  his  death-bed,  by  a  habit  of  be 
ing  away  from  home  at  night,  by  fifty  other  things 
equally  grave.  Anybody  might  be  an  accuser,  —  a  per 
sonal  enemy,  an  infamous  person,  a  child,  parent,  broth 
er,  or  sister.  Once  accused,  the  culprit  was  not  to  be 
allowed  to  touch  the  ground  on  the  way  to  prison,  was 
not  to  be  left  alone  there  lest  she  have  interviews  with 
the  Devil  and  get  from  him  the  means  of  being  insensi 
ble  under  torture,  was  to  be  stripped  and  shaved  in  order 
to  prevent  her  concealing  some  charm,  or  to  facilitate 
the  finding  of  witch-marks.  Her  right  thumb  tied  to 
her  left  great-toe,  and  vice  versa,  she  was  thrown  into  the 
water.  If  she  floated,  she  was  a  witch  ;  if  she  sank  and 
was  drowned,  she  was  lucky.  This  trial,  as  old  as  the 
days  of  Pliny  the  Elder,  was  gone  out  of  fashion,  the 
author  of  De  Lamiis  assures  us,  in  his  day,  everywhere 
but  in  Westphalia,  "  On  halfproof  or  strong  presump 
tion,"  says  Bodin,  the  judge  may  proceed  to  torture. 
If  the  witch  did  not  shed  tears  under  the  rack,  it  was 


WITCHCRAFT.  135 

almost  conclusive  of  guilt.  On  this  topic  of  torture  he 
grows  eloquent.  The  rack  does  very  well,  but  to  thrust 
splinters  between  the  nails  and  flesh  of  hands  and  feet 
"  is  the  most  excellent  geheiina  of  all,  and  practised  in 
Turkey."  That  of  Florence,  where  they  seat  the  crim 
inal  in  a  hanging  chair  so  contrived  that  if  he  drop 
asleep  it  overturns  and  leaves  him  hanging  by  a  rope 
which  wrenches  his  arms  backwards,  is  perhaps  even  bet 
ter,  "  for  the  limbs  are  not  broken,  and  without  trouble  or 
labor  one  gets  out  the  truth."  It  is  well  in  carrying  the 
accused  to  the  chamber  of  torture  to  cause  some  in  the 
next  room  to  shriek  fearfully  as  if  on  the  rack,  that  they 
may  be  terrified  into  confession.  It  is  proper  to  tell 
them  that  their  accomplices  have  confessed  and  accused 
them  ("though  they  have  done  no  such  thing")  that 
they  may  do  the  same  out  of  revenge.  The  judge  may 
also  with  a  good  conscience  lie  to  the  prisoner  and  tell 
her  that  if  she  admit  her  guilt,  she  may  be  pardoned. 
This  is  Bodin's  opinion,  but  Walburger,  writing  a  cen 
tury  later,  concludes  that  the  judge  may  go  to  any  ex 
tent  citra  mendacium,  this  side  of  lying.  He  may  tell 
the  witch  that  he  will  be  favorable,  meaning  to  the 
Commonwealth ;  that  he  will  see  that  she  has  a  new 
house  built  for  her,  that  is,  a  wooden  one  to  burn  her 
in  ;  that  her  confession  will  be  most  useful  in  saving  her 
life,  to  wit,  her  life  eternal.  There  seems  little  difference 
between  the  German's  white  lies  and  the  Frenchman's 
black  ones.  As  to  punishment,  Bodin  is  fierce  for  burn 
ing.  Though  a  Protestant,  he  quotes  with  evident  satis 
faction  a  decision  of  the  magistrates  that  one  "  who  had 
eaten  flesh  on  a  Friday  should  be  burned  alive  unless  he 
repented,  and  if  he  repented,  yet  he  was  hanged  out  of 
compassion."  A  child  under  twelve  who  will  not  confess 
meeting  with  the  Devil  should  be  put  to  death  if  con 
victed  of  the  fact,  though  Bodin  allows  that  Satan  made 


136  WITCHCKAFT. 

no  express  compact  with  those  who  had  not  arrived  at 
puberty.  This  he  learned  from  the  examination  of 
Jeanne  Harvillier,  who  deposed,  "  that,  though  her 
mother  dedicated  her  to  Satan  so  soon  as  she  was  born, 
yet  she  was  not  married  to  him,  nor  did  he  demand  that, 
or  her  renunciation  of  God,  till  she  had  attained  the  age 
of  twelve." 

There  is  no  more  painful  reading  than  this,  except 
the  trials  of  the  witches  themselves.  These  awaken,  by 
turns,  pity,  indignation,  disgust,  and  dread, '—  dread  at 
the  thought  of  what  the  human  mind  may  be  brought 
to  believe  not  only  probable,  but  proven.  But  it  is  well 
to  be  put  upon  our  guard  by  lessons  of  this  kind,  for  the 
wisest  man  is  in  some  respects  little  better  than  a  mad 
man  in  a  strait-waistcoat  of  habit,  public  opinion,  pru 
dence,  or  the  like.  Scepticism  began  at  length  to  make 
itself  felt,  but  it  spread  slowly  and  was  shy  of  proclaim 
ing  itself.  The  orthodox  party  was  not  backward  to 
charge  with  sorcery  whoever  doubted  their  facts  or  pitied 
their  victims.  Bodin  says  that  it  is  good  cause  of  sus 
picion  against  a  judge  if  he  turn  the  matter  into  ridicule, 
or  incline  toward  mercy.  The  mob,  as  it  always  is,  was 
orthodox.  It  was  dangerous  to  doubt,  it  might  be  fatal 
to  deny.  In  1453  Guillaume  de  Lure  was  burned  at 
Poitiers  on  his  own  confession  of  a  compact  with  Satan, 
by  which  he  agreed  "  to  preach  and  did  preach  that 
everything  told  of  sorcerers  was  mere  fable,  and  that  it 
was  cruelly  done  to  condemn  them  to  death."  This  con 
tract  was  found  among  his  papers  signed  "  with  the 
Devil's  own  claw,"  as  Howell  says  speaking  of  a  similar 
case.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  earlier 
doubters  were  cautious.  There  was  literally  a  reign  of 
terror,  and  during  such  regimes  men  are  commonly  found 
more  eager  to  be  informers  and  accusers  than  of  counsel 
for  the  defence.  Peter  of  Abano  is  reckoned  among 


WITCHCRAFT.  137 

the  earliest  unbelievers  who  declared  himself  openly.* 
Chaucer  was  certainly  a  sceptic,  as  appears  by  the  open 
ing  of  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale.  Wierus,  a  German 
physician,  was  the  first  to  undertake  (1563)  a  refutation 
of  the  facts  and  assumptions  on  which  the  prosecutions 
for  witchcraft  were  based.  His  explanation  of  the  phe 
nomena  is  mainly  physiological.  Mr.  Leckie  hardly 
states  his  position  correctly,  in  saying,  "  that  he  never 
dreamed  of  -  restricting  the  sphere  of  the  supernatural." 
Wierus  went  as  far  as  he  dared.  No  one  can  read  his 
book  without  feeling  that  he  insinuates  much  more  than 
he  positively  affirms  or  denies.  He  would  have  weak 
ened  his  cause  if  he  had  seemed  to  disbelieve  in  demo 
niacal  possession,  since  that  had  the  supposed  warrant  of 
Scripture ;  but  it  may  be  questioned  whether  he  uses 
the  words  Satan  and  Demon  in  any  other  way  than  that 
in  which  many  people  still  use  the  word  Nature.  He 
was  forced  to  accept  certain  premises  of  his  opponents 
by  the  line  of  his  argument.  When  he  recites  incredi 
ble  stories  without  comment,  it  is  not  that  he  believes 
them,  but  that  he  thinks  their  absurdity  obvious.  That 
he  wrote  under  a  certain  restraint  is  plain  from  the  Colo 
phon  of  his  book,  where  he  says :  "  Nihil  autem  hie  ita 
assertum  volo,  quod  eequiori  judicio  Catholicse  Christi 
Ecclesiae  non  omnino  submittam,  palinodia  mox  spon- 
tanea  emendaturus,  si  erroris  alicubi  convincar."  A  great 
deal  of  latent  and  timid  scepticism  seems  to  have  been 
brought  to  the  surface  by  his  work.  Many  eminent  per 
sons  wrote  to  him  in  gratitude  and  commendation.  In 
the  Preface  to  his  shorter  treatise  De  Lamiis  (which  is  a 

*  I  have  no  means  of  ascertaining  Avhether  he  did  or  not.  He  was 
more  probably  charged  with  it  by  the  inquisitors.  Mr.  Leckie  seems 
to  write  of  him  only  upon  hearsay,  for  he  calls  him  Peter  "  of  Apono," 
apparently  translating  a  French  translation  of  the  Latin  "  Aponus." 
The  only  book  attributed  to  him  that  I  have  ever  seen  is  itself  a  kind 
of  manual  of  magic. 


138  WITCHCRAFT. 

mere  abridgment),  he  thanks  God  that  his  labors  had 
"in  many  places  caused  the  cruelty  against  innocent 
blood  to  slacken,"  and  that  "  some  more  distinguished 
judges  treat  more  mildly  and  even  absolve  from  capital 
punishment  the  wretched  old  women  branded  with  the 
odious  name  of  witches  by  the  populace."  In  the  Pseu- 
domonarchia  Dcemonum,  he  gives  a  kind  of  census  of  the 
diabolic  kingdom,*  but  evidently  with  secret  intention 
of  making  the  whole  thing  ridiculous,  or  it  would  not 
have  so  stirred  the  bile  of  Bodin.  Wierus  was  saluted 
by  many  contemporaries  as  a  Hercules  who  destroyed 
monsters,  and  himself  not  immodestly  claimed  the  civic 
wreath  for  having  saved  the  lives  of  fellow-citizens. 
Posterity  should  not  forget  a  man  who  really  did  an 
honest  life's  work  for  humanity  and  the  liberation  of 
thought.  From  one  of  the  letters  appended  to  his  book 
we  learn  that  Jacobus  Savagius,  a  physician  of  Antwerp, 
had  twenty  years  before  written  a  treatise  with  the  same 
design,  but  confining  himself  to  the  medical  argument 
exclusively.  He  was,  however,  prevented  from  publish 
ing  it  by  death.  It  is  pleasant  to  learn  from  Bodin  that 
Alciato,  the  famous  lawyer  and  emblematist,  wras  one  of 
those  who  "  laughed  and  made  others  laugh  at  the  evi 
dence  relied  on  at  the  trials,  insisting  that  witchcraft 
was  a  thing  impossible  and  fabulous,  and  so  softened  the 
hearts  of  judges  (in  spite  of  the  fact  that  an  inquisitor 
had  caused  to  burn  more  than  a  hundred  sorcerers  in 
Piedmont),  that  all  the  accused  escaped."  In  England, 
Reginald  Scot  was  the  first  to  enter  the  lists  in  behalf 
of  those  who  had  no  champion.  His  book,  published  in 
1584,  is  full  of  manly  sense  and  spirit,  above  all,  of  a 
tender  humanity  that  gives  it  a  warmth  which  we  miss 
in  every  other  written  on  the  same  side.  In  the  dedica- 

*  "  With  the  names  and  surnames,"  says  BMin,  indignantly,  "  of 
seventy-two  princes,  and  of  seven  million  foar  hundred  and  five  thou 
sand  nine  hundred  and  twenty-six  devils,  errors  excepted. " 


WITCHCRAFT.  139 

tion  to  Sir  Roger  Manwood  he  says :  "  I  renounce  all 
protection  and  despise  all  friendship  that  might  serve  to 
wards  the  suppressing  or  supplanting  of  truth."  To  his 
kinsman,  Sir  Thomas  Scot,  he  writes  :  "  My  greatest 
adversaries  are  young  ignorance  and  old  custom ;  for 
what  folly  soever  tract  of  time  hath  fostered,  it  is  so 
superstitiously  pursued  of  some,  as  though  no  error 
could  be  acquainted  with  custom."  And  in  his  Preface 
he  thus  states  his  motives  :  "  God  that  knoweth  my 
heart  is  witness,  and  you  that  read  my  book  shall  see, 
that  my  drift  and  purpose  in  this  enterprise  tendeth 
only  to  these  respects.  First,  that  the  glory  and  power 
of  God  be  not  so  abridged  and  abased  as  to  be  thrust 
into  the  hand  or  lip  of  a  lewd  old  woman,  whereby  the 
work  of  the  Creator  should  be  attributed  to  the  power 
of  a  creature.  Secondly,  that  the  religion  of  the  Gos 
pel  may  be  seen  to  stand  without  such  peevish  trump 
ery.  Thirdly,  that  lawful  favor  and  Christian  compas 
sion  be  rather  used  towards  these  poor  souls  than  rigor 
and  extremity.  Because  they  which  are  commonly  ac 
cused  of  witchcraft  are  the  least  sufficient  of  all  other 
persons  to  speak  for  themselves,  as  having  the  most 
base  and  simple  education  of  all  others,  the  extremity 
of  their  age  giving  them  leave  to  dote,  their  poverty  -to 
beg,  their  wrongs  to  chide  and  threaten  (as  being  void 
of  any  other  way  of  revenge),  their  humor  melancholi- 
cal  to  be  full  of  imaginations,  from  whence  chiefly  pro- 

ceedeth  the  vanity  of  their  confessions And  for 

so  much  as  the  mighty  help  themselves  together,  and 
the  poor  widow's  cry,  though  it  reach  to  Heaven,  is 
scarce  heard  here  upon  earth,  I  thought  good  (according 
to  my  poor  ability)  to  make  intercession  that  some  part 
of  common  rigor  and  some  points  of  hasty  judgment  may 
be  advised  upon."  ....  The  case  is  nowhere  put  with 
more  point,  or  urged  with  more  sense  and  eloquence, 


140  WITCHCRAFT. 

than  by  Scot,  whose  book  contains  also  more  curious 
matter,  in  the  way  of  charms,  incantations,  exorcisms, 
and  feats  of  legerdemain,  than  any  other  of  the  kind. 

Other  books  followed  on  the  same  side,  of  which  Bek- 
ker's,  published  about  a  century  later,  was  the  most  im 
portant.  It  is  well  reasoned,  learned,  and  tedious  to  a 
masterly  degree.  But  though  the  belief  in  witchcraft 
might  be  shaken,  it  still  had  the  advantage  of  being 
on  the  whole  orthodox  and  respectable.  Wise  men,  as 
usual,  insisted  on  regarding  superstition  as  of  one  sub 
stance  with  faith,  and  objected  to  any  scouring  of  the 
shield  of  religion,  lest,  like  that  of  Cornelius  Scriblerus, 
it  should  suddenly  turn  out  to  be  nothing  more  than 
"  a  paltry  old  sconce  with  the  nozzle  broke  off."  The 
Devil  continued  to  be  the  only  recognized  Minister  Resi 
dent  of  God  upon  earth.  When  we  remember  that  one 
man's  accusation  on  his  death-bed  was  enough  to  consti 
tute  grave  presumption  of  witchcraft,  it  might  seem 
singular  that  dying  testimonies  were  so  long  of  no  avail 
against  the  common  credulity.  But  it  should  be  re 
membered  that  men  are  mentally  no  less  than  corporeal 
ly  gregarious,  and  that  public  opinion,  the  fetish  even 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  makes  men,  whether  for 
good  or  ill,  into  a  mob,  which  either  hurries  the  individ 
ual  judgment  along  with  it,  or  runs  over  and  tramples  it 
into  insensibility.  Those  who  are  so  fortunate  as  to  oc 
cupy  the  philosophical  position  of  spectators  ab  extra 
are  very  few  in  any  generation. 

There  were  exceptions,  it  is  true,  but  the  old  cruel 
ties  went  on.  In  1610  a  case  came  before  the  tribunal  of 
the  Tourelle,  and  when  the  counsel  for  the  accused  argued 
at  some  length  that  sorcery  was  ineffectual,  and  that 
the  Devil  could  not  destroy  life,  President  Seguier  told 
him  that  he  might  spare  his  breath,  since  the  court  had 
long  been  convinced  on  those  points.  And  yet  two 


WITCHCRAFT.  141 

later  the  grand-vicars  of  the  Bishop  of  Beauvais 
solemnly  summoned  Beelzebuth,  Satan,  Motelu,  and 
Briftaut,  with  the  four  legions  under  their  charge,  to  ap 
pear  and  sign  an  agreement  never  again  to  enter  the 
bodies  of  reasonable  or  other  creatures,  under  pain  of 
excommunication  !  If  they  refused,  they  were  to  be 
given  over  to  "  the  power  of  hell  to  be  tormented  and 
tortured  more  than  was  customary,  three  thousand 
years  after  the  judgment."  Under  this  proclamation 
they  all  came  in,  like  reconstructed  rebels,  and  signed 
whatever  document  was  put  before  them.  Toward  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  safe  thing  was 
still  to  believe,  or  at  any  rate  to  profess  belief.  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  though  he  had  written  an  exposure  of 
"Vulgar  Errors,"  testified  in  court  to  his  faith  in  the 
possibility  of  witchcraft.  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  in  his 
"  Observations  on  the  Religio  Medici,"  takes,  perhaps,  as 
advanced  ground  as  any,  when  he  says  :  "Neither  do  I 
deny  there  are  witches  •  I  only  reserve  my  assent  till  I 
meet  with  stronger  motives  to  carry  it."  The  position 
of  even  enlightened  men  of  the  world  in  that  age 
might  be  called  semi-sceptical.  La  Bruyere,  no  doubt, 
expresses  the  average  of  opinion  :  "  Que  penser  de  la 
magie  et  du  sortilege  1  La  theorie  en  est  obscurcie,  les 
principes  vagues,  incertains,  et  qui  approchent  du  vi- 
sionnaire ;  mais  il  y  a  des  faits  embarrassants,  afnrmes 
par  des  hommes  graves  qui  les  ont  vus ;  les  admettre 
tous,  ou  les  nier  tons,  paratt  un  egal  inconvenient,  et 
j'osedire  qu'en  cela  comme  en  toutes.les  choses  extraor- 
dinaires  et  qui  sortent  des  communes  regies,  il  y  a  un 
parti  a  trouver  entre  les  ames  credules  et  les  esprits 
forts."  *  Montaigne,  to  be  sure,  had  long  before  de 
clared  his  entire  disbelief,  and  yet  the  Parliament  of 
Bourdeaux,  his  own  city,  condemned  a  man  to  be  burned 

*  Cited  by  Maury,  p.  221,  note  4. 


142  WITCHCRAFT. 

as  a  noiieur  ffaiguillettes  so  lately  as  1718.  Indeed,  it 
was  not,  says  Maury,  till  the  first  quarter  of  the  eigh 
teenth  century  that  one  might  safely  publish  his  incre 
dulity  in  France.  In  Scotland,  witches  were  burned  for 
the  last  time  in  1722.  Garinet  cites  the  case  of  a  girl 
near  Amiens  possessed  by  three  demons,  - —  Mimi,  Zozo, 
and  Crapoulet,  —  in  1816. 

The  two  beautiful  volumes  of  Mr.  Upham  are,  so  far 
as  I  know,  unique  in  their  kind.  It  is,  in  some  re 
spects,  a  clinical  lecture  on  human  nature,  as  well  as  on 
the  special  epidemical  disease  under  which  the  patient 
is  laboring.  He  has  written  not  merely  a  history  of  the 
so-called  Salem  Witchcraft,  but  has  made  it  intelligible 
by  a  minute  account  of  the  place  where  the  delusion 
took  its  rise,  the  persons  concerned  in  it,  whether  as 
actors  or  sufferers,  and  the  circumstances  which  led  to 
it.  By  deeds,  wills,  and  the  records  of  courts  and 
churches,  by  plans,  maps,  and  drawings,  he  has  re 
created  Salem  Village  as  it  was  two  hundred  years  ago, 
so  that  we  seem  wellnigh  to  talk  with  its  people  and 
walk  over  its  fields,  or  through  its  cart-tracks  and 
bridle-roads.  We  are  made  partners  in  parish  and  vil 
lage  feuds,  we  share  in  the  chimney-corner  gossip,  and 
learn  for  the  first  time  how  many  mean  and  merely 
human  motives,  whether  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
gave  impulse  and  intensity  to  the  passions  of  the  actors 
in  that  memorable  tragedy  which  dealt  the  death-blow 
in  this  country  to  the  belief  in  Satanic  compacts.  Mr. 
Upham's  minute  details,  which  give  us  something  like  a 
photographic  picture  of  the  in-door  and  out-door  scen 
ery  that  surrounded  the  events  he  narrates,  help  us 
materially  to  understand  their  origin  and  the  course 
they  inevitably  took.  In  this  respect  his  book  is  origi 
nal  and  full  of  new  interest.  To  know  the  kind  of  life 
these  people  led,  the  kind  of  place  they  dwelt  in,  and 


WITCHCRAFT.  143 

the  tenor  of  their  thought,  makes  much  real  to  us  that 
was  conjectural  before.  The  influences  of  outward  na 
ture,  of  remoteness  from  the  main  highways  of  the 
world's  thought,  of  seclusion,  as  the  foster-mother  of 
traditionary  beliefs,  of  a  hard  life  and  unwholesome  diet 
in  exciting  or  obscuring  the  brain  through  the  nerves 
and  stomach,  have  been  hitherto  commonly  overlooked 
in  accounting  for  the  phenomena  of  witchcraft.  The 
great  persecutions  for  this  imaginary  crime  have  always 
taken  place  in  lonely  places,  among  the  poor,  the  igno 
rant,  and,  above  all,  the  ill-fed. 

One  of  the  best  things  in  Mr.  Upham's  book  is  the 
portrait  of  Parris,  the  minister  of  Salem  Village,  in 
whose  household  the  children  who,  under  the  assumed 
possession  of  evil  spirits,  became  accusers  and  witnesses, 
began  their  tricks.  He  is  shown  to  us  pedantic  and 
something  of  a  martinet  in  church  discipline  and  cere 
mony,  somewhat 'inclined  to  magnify  his  office,  fond  of 
controversy  as  he  was  skilful  and  rather  unscrupulous 
in  the  conduct  of  it,  and  glad  of  any  occasion  to  make 
himself  prominent.  Was  he  the  unconscious  agent 
of  his  own  superstition,  or  did  he  take  advantage  of 
the  superstition  of  others  for  purposes  of  his  own  1 
The  question  is  not  an  easy  one  to  answer.  Men  will 
sacrifice  everything,  sometimes  even  themselves,  to 
their  pride  of  logic  and  their  love  of  victory.  Bodin 
loses  sight  of  humanity  altogether  in  his  eagerness  to 
make  out  his  case,  and  display  his  learning  in  the  canon 
and  civil  law.  He  does  not  scruple  to  exaggerate,  to 
misquote,  to  charge  his  antagonists  with  atheism,  sor 
cery,  and  insidious  designs  against  religion  and  society, 
that  he  may  persuade  the  jury  of  Europe  to  bring  in  a 
verdict  of  guilty.*  Yet  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt 

*  There  is  a  kind  of  compensation  in  the  fact  .that  he  himself  lived 
to  be  accused  of  sorcery  and  Judaism. 


144  WITCHCRAFT. 

the  sincerity  of  his  belief.  Was  Parris  equally  sincere  1 
On  the  whole,  I  think  it  likely  that  he  was.  But  if  we 
acquit  Parris,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  demoniacal 
girls  1  The  probability  seems  to  be  that  those  who  be 
gan  in  harmless  deceit  found  themselves  at  length  in 
volved  so  deeply,  that  dread  of  shame  and  punishment 
drove  them  to  an  extremity  where  their  only  choice  was 
between  sacrificing  themselves,  or  others  to  save  them 
selves.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  some  of  the  younger 
girls  were  so  far  carried  along  by  imitation  or  imagina 
tive  sympathy  as  in  some  degree  to  "  credit  their  own 
lie."  Any  one  who  has  watched  or  made  experiments 
in  animal  magnetism  knows  how  easy  it  is  to  persuade 
young  women  of  nervous  temperaments  that  they  are 
doing  that  by  the  will  of  another  which  they  really  do 
by  an  obscure  volition  of  their  own,  under  the  influence 
of  an  imagination  adroitly  guided  by  the  magnetizer. 
The  marvellous  is  so  fascinating,  that  nine  persons  in 
ten,  if  once  persuaded  that  a  thing  is  possible,  are  eager 
to  believe  it  probable,  and  at  last  cunning  in  convincing 
themselves  that  it  is  proven.  But  it  is  impossible  to 
believe  that  the  possessed  girls  in  this  case  did  not  know 
how  the  pins  they  vomited  got  into  their  mouths.  Mr. 
Upham  has  shown,  in  the  case  of  Anne  Putnam,  Jr., 
an  hereditary  tendency  to  hallucination,  if  not  insanity. 
One  of  her  uncles  had  seen  the  Devil  by  broad  day 
light  in  the  novel  disguise  of  a  blue  boar,  in  which 
shape,  as  a  tavern  sign,  he  had  doubtless  proved  more 
seductive  than  in  his  more  ordinary  transfigurations. 
A  great  deal  of  light  is  let  in  upon  the  question  of 
whether  there  was  deliberate  imposture  or  no,  by  the 
narrative  of  Rev.  Mr.  Turell  of  Medford,  written  in 
1728,  which  gives  us  all  the  particulars  of  a  case  of 
pretended  possession  in  Littleton,  eight  years  before. 
The  eldest  of  three  sisters  began  the  game,  and  found 


WITCHCRAFT.  145 

herself  before  long  obliged  to  take  the  next  in  age  into 
her  confidence.     By  and  by  the  youngest,  finding  her 
sisters  pitied  and  caressed  on  account  of  their  supposed 
sufferings  while  she  was  neglected,  began  to  play  off  the 
same    tricks.     The    usual   phenomena   followed.     They 
were  convulsed,  they  fell  into  swoons,  they  were  pinched 
and  bruised,  they  were  found  in  the  water,  on  the  top  of 
a  tree  or  of  the  barn.     To  these  places  they  said  they 
were   conveyed  through  the  air,  and  there  were  those 
who  had  seen  them  flying,  which  shows  how  strong  is 
the  impulse  which  prompts  men  to  conspire  with  their 
own  delusion,  where  the  marvellous  is  concerned.     The 
girls  did  whatever  they  had  heard  or  read  that  was 
common  m  such  cases.     They  even  accused  a  respect 
able  neighbor  as  the  cause  of  their  torments.     There 
were  some  doubters,  but  "  so  far  as  I  can  learn,"  says 
Turell,    "  the  greater  number   believed  and   said  they 
were  under  the  evil  hand,  or  possessed  by  Satan."     But 
the  most  interesting  fact  of  all  is  supplied  by  the  confes 
sion  of  the  elder  sister, 'made  eight  years  later  under 
stress   of    remorse.     Having   once    begun,    they   found 
returning  more  tedious  than  going  o'er.     To  keep  up 
their  cheat  made  life  a  burden  to  them,  but  they  could 
not  stop.     Thirty  years    earlier,  their  juggling  might 
have  proved  as    disastrous  as   that  at    Salem  Village. 
There,  parish  and  boundary  feuds  had  set  enmity  be 
tween  neighbors,   and  the  girls,  called  on  to  say  who 
troubled  them,  cried  out  upon  those  whom   they  had 
been   wont   to   hear   called   by  hard   names  at   home. 
They  probably  had  no  notion  what  a  frightful  ending 
their  comedy  was  to  have ;  but  at  any  rate  they  were 
powerless,  for  the  reins  had  passed  out  of  their  hands 
into  the  sterner  grasp  of  minister  and  magistrate.    They 
were  dragged  deeper  and  deeper,  as  men  always  are  by 
their  own  lie. 


146  WITCHCRAFT. 

The  proceedings  at  the  Salem  trials  are  sometimes 
spoken  of  as  if  they  were  exceptionally  cruel.  But,  in 
fact,  if  compared  with  others  of  the  same  kind,  they 
were  exceptionally  humane.  At  a  time  when  Baxter 
could  tell  with  satisfaction  of  a  "reading  parson"  eigh 
ty  years  old,  who,  after  being  kept  awake  five  days 
and  nights,  confessed  his  dealings  with  the  Devil,  it  is 
rather  wonderful  that  no  mode  of  torture  other  than 
mental  was  tried  at  Salem.  Nor  were  the  magistrates 
more  besotted  or  unfair  than  usual  in  dealing  with  the 
evidence.  Now  and  then,  it  is  true,  a  man  more  scep 
tical  or  intelligent  than  common  had  exposed  some  pre 
tended  demoniac.  The  Bishop  of  Orleans,  in  1598, 
read  aloud  to  Martha  Brossier  the  story  of  the  Ephe- 
sian  Widow,  and  the  girl,  hearing  Latin,  and  taking  it 
for  Scripture,  went  forthwith  into  convulsions.  He 
found  also  that  the  Devil  who  possessed  her  could  not 
distinguish  holy  from  profane  water.  But  that  there 
were  deceptions  did  not  shake  the  general  belief  in  the 
reality  of  possession.  The  proof  in  such  cases  could 
not  and  ought  not  to  be  subjected  to  the  ordinary  tests. 
"If  many  natural  things,"  says  Bodin,  "  are  incred 
ible  and  some  of  them  incomprehensible,  a  fortiori  the 
power  of  supernatural  intelligences  and  the  doings  of 
spirits  are  incomprehensible.  But  error  has  risen  to  its 
height  in  this,  that  those  who  have  denied  the  power  of 
spirits  and  the  doings  of  sorcerers  have  wished  to  dis 
pute  physically  concerning  supernatural  or  metaphysical 
things,  which  is  a  notable  incongruity."  \^That  the  girls 
were  really  possessed,  seemed  to  Stoughton  and  his  col 
leagues  the  most  rational  theory,  —  a  theory  in  har 
mony  with  the  nest  of  their  creed,  and  sustained  by  the 
unanimous  consent  of  pious  men  as  well  as  the  evidence 
of  that  most  cunning  and  least  suspected  of  all  sor 
cerers,  the  Past,  —  and  how  confront  or  cross-examine 


WITCHCRAFT.  147 

invisible  witnesses,  especially  witnesses  whom  it  was  a 
kind  of  impiety  to  doubt  1  /Evidence  that  would  have 
been  convincing  in  ordinary  cases  was  of  no  weight 
against  the  general  prepossession.  In  1659  the  house 
of  a  man  in  Brightling,  Sussex,  was  troubled  by  a  de 
mon,  who  set  it  on  fire  at  various  times,  and  was  con 
tinually  throwing  things  about.  The  clergy  of  the 
neighborhood  held  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  in  conse 
quence.  A  maid-servant  was  afterwards  detected  as 
the  cause  of  the  missiles.  But  this  did  not  in  the  least 
stagger  Mr.  Bennet,  minister  of  the  parish,  who  merely 
says  :  "  There  was  a  seeming  blur  cast,  though  not  on 
the  whole,  yet  upon  some  part  of  it,  for  their  servant- 
girl  was  at  last  found  throwing  some  things,"  and  goes 
off  into  a  eulogium  on  the  "  efficacy  of  prayer." 

In  one  respect,  to  which  Mr.  Upham  first  gives  the 
importance  it  deserves,  the  Salem  trials  were  distin 
guished  from  all  others.  Though  some  of  the  accused 
had  been  terrified  into  confession,  yet  not  one  perse 
vered  in  it,  but  all  died  protesting  their  innocence,  and 
with  unshaken  constancy,  though  an  acknowledgment 
of  guilt  would  have  saved  the  lives  of  all.  This  martyr 
proof  of  the  efficacy  of  Puritanism  in  the  character  and 
conscience  may  be  allowed  to  outweigh  a  great  many 
sneers  at  Puritan  fanaticism.  It  is  at  least  a  testimony 
to  the  courage  and  constancy  which  a  profound  religious 
sentiment  had  made  common  among  the  people  of 
whom  these  sufferers  were  average  representatives. 
The  accused  also  were  not,  as  was  commonly  the  case, 
abandoned  by  their  friends.  In  all  the  trials  of  this 
kind  there  is  nothing  so  pathetic  as  the  picture  of  Jona 
than  Gary  holding  up  the  weary  arms  of  his  wife  during 
her  trial,  and  wiping  away  the  sweat  from  her  brow  and 
the  tears  from  her  face.  Another  remarkable  fact  is 
this,  that  while  in  other  countries  the  delusion  was  ex- 


148  WITCHCRAFT. 

tinguished  by  the  incredulity  of  the  upper  classes  and 
the  interference  of  authority,  here  the  reaction  took 
place  among  the  people  themselves,  and  here  only  was 
an  attempt  made  at  some  legislative  restitution,  how 
ever  inadequate.  Mr.  Upham's  sincere  and  honest 
narrative,  while  it  never  condescends  to  a  formal  plea, 
is  the  best  vindication  possible  of  a  community  which 
was  itself  the  greatest  sufferer  by  the  persecution  which 
its  credulity  engendered. 

If  any  lesson  may  be  drawn  from  the  tragical  and  too 
often  disgustful  history  of  witchcraft,  it  is  not  one  of 
exultation  at  our  superior  enlightenment  or  shame  at 
the  shortcomings  of  the  human  intellect.  It  is  rather 
one  of  charity  and  self-distrust.  When  we  see  what  in 
human  absurdities  men  in  other  respects  wise  and  good 
have  clung  to  as  the  corner-stone  of  their  faith  in  im 
mortality  and  a  divine  ordering  of  the  world,  may  we 
not  suspect  that  those  who  now  maintain  political  or 
other  doctrines  which  seem  to  us  barbarous  and  unen 
lightened,  may  be,  for  all  that,  in  the  main  as  virtuous 
and  clear-sighted  as  ourselves  ?  While  we  maintain  our 
own  side  with  an  honest  ardor  of  conviction,  let  us  not 
forget  to  allow  for  mortal  incompetence  in  the  other. 
And  if  there  are  men  who  regret  the  Good  Old  Times, 
without  too  clear  a  notion  of  what  they  were,  they 
should  at  least  be  thankful  that  we  are  rid  of  that 
misguided  energy  of  faith  which  justified  conscience 
in  making  men  unrelentingly  cruel.  Even  Mr.  Leckie 
softens  a  little  at  the  thought  of  the  many  innocent 
and  beautiful  beliefs  of  which  a  growing  scepticism  has 
robbed  iis  in  the  decay  of  supernaturalism.  But  we 
need  not  despair  ;  for,  after  all,  scepticism  is  first 
cousin  of  credulity,  and  we  are  not  surprised  to  see  the 
tough  doubter  Montaigne  hanging  up  his  offerings  in 
the  shrine  of  our  Lady  of  Loreto.  Scepticism  commonly 


WITCHCRAFT.  149 

takes  up  the  room  left  by  defect  of  imagination,  and  is 
the  very  quality  of  mind  most  likely  to  seek  for  sen 
sual  proof  of  supersensual  things.  If  one  came  from 
the  dead,  it  could  not  believe ;  and  yet  it  longs  for  such 
a  witness,  and  will  put  up  with  a  very  dubious  one. 
|  So  long  as  night  is  left  and  the  helplessness  of  dream, 
I  the  wonderful  will  not  cease  from  among  men.  While 
we  are  the  solitary  prisoners  of  darkness,  the  witch 
seats  herself  at  the  loom  of  thought,  and  weaves 
strange  figures  into  the  web  that  looks  so  familiar  and 
ordinary  in  the  dry  light  of  every-day.  Just  as  we 
are  nattering  ourselves  that  the  old  spirit  of  sorcery  is 
laid,  behold  the  tables  are  tipping  and  the  floors  drum 
ming  all  over  Christendom.  The  faculty  of  wonder  is 
n<3t  defunct,  but  is  only  getting  more  and  more  emanci 
pated  from  the  unnatural  service  of  terror,  and  restored 
to  its  proper  function  as  a  minister  of  delight.  A 
higher  mode  of  belief  is  the  best  exerciser,  because  it 
makes  the  spiritual  at  one  with  the  actual  world  instead 
of  hostile,  or  at  best  alien.  It  has  been  the  grossly 
material  interpretations  of  spiritual  doctrine  that 
have  given  occasion  to  the  two  extremes  of  superstition 
and  unbelief.  /While  the  resurrection  of  the  body  has 
been  insisted  on,  that  resurrection  from  the  body  which 
is  the  privilege  of  all  has  been  forgotten.  Superstition 
in  its  baneful  form  was  largely  due  to  the  enforcement 
by  the  Church  of  arguments  that  involved  a  petitio 
principii,  for  it  is  the  miserable  necessity  of  all  false 
logic  to  accept  of  very  ignoble  allies.  Fear  became  at 
length  its  chief  expedient  for  the  maintenance  of  its 
power ;  and  as  there  is  a  beneficent  necessity  laid  upon 
a  majority  of  mankind  to  sustain  and  perpetuate  the 
order  of  things  they  are  born  into,  and  to  make  all  new 
ideas  manfully  prove  their  right,  first,  to  be  at  all,  and 
then  to  be  heard,  many  even  superior  minds  dreaded 


150  WITCHCRAFT. 

the  tearing  away  of  vicious  accretions  as  dangerous  to 
the  whole  edifice  of  religion  and  society.  But  if  this 
old  ghost  be  fading  away  in  what  we  regard  as  the 
dawn  of  a  better  day,  we  may  console  ourselves  by 
thinking  that  perhaps,  after  all,  we  are  not  so  much 
wiser  than  our  ancestors.  The  rappings,  the  trance 
mediums,  the  visions  of  hands  without  bodies,  the 
sounding  of  musical  instruments  without  visible  fingers, 
the  miraculous  inscriptions  on  the  naked  flesh,  the  en- 
livenment  of  furniture,  —  we  have  invented  none  of 
them,  they  are  all  heirlooms.  There  is  surely  room  for 
yet  another  schoolmaster,  when  a  score  of  seers  adver 
tise  themselves  in  Boston  newspapers.  And  if  the  me 
taphysicians  can  never  rest  till  they  have  taken  their 
watch  to  pieces  and  have  arrived  at  a  happy  positivism 
as  to  its  structure,  though  at  the  risk  of  bringing  it  to 
a  no-go,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  majority  will  always 
take  more  satisfaction  in  seeing  its  hands  mysteriously 
move  on,  even  if  they  should  err  a  little  as  to  the  pre 
cise  time  of  day  established  by  the  astronomical  observa 
tories. 


SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 


IT  may  be  doubted  whether  any  language  be  rich 
enough  to  maintain  more  than  one  truly  great  poet,  — 
and  whether  there  be  more  than  one  period,  and  that  very 
short,  in  the  life  of  a  language,  when  such  a  phenome 
non  as  a  great  poet  is  possible.  It  may  be  reckoned 
one  of  the  rarest  pieces  of  good-luck  that  ever  fell  to 
the  share  of  a  race,  that  (a^h-wasL-triie  of  Shakespeare) 
its  most  rhythmic  genius,  its  acutest  intellect,  its  pro- 
foundest  imagination,  and  its  healthiest  understanding 
should  have  been  combined  in  one  man,  and  that  he 
should  have  arrived  at  the  full  development  of  his 
powers  at  the  moment  when  the  material  in  which  he 
was  to  work  —  that  wonderful  composite  called  English, 
the  best  result  of  the  confusion  of  tongues  —  was  in  its 
freshest  perfection.  The  English-speaking  nations  should 
build  a  monument  to  the  misguided  enthusiasts  of  the 
Plain,  of  Shinar ;  for,  as  the  mixture  of  many  bloods 
seems  to  have  made  them  the  most  vigorous  of  modern 
races,  so  has  the  mingling  of  divers  speeches  given  them 
a  language  which  is  perhaps  the  noblest  vehicle  of  poetic 
thought  that  ever  existed. 

Had  Shakespeare  been  born  fifty  years  earlier,  he 
would  have  been  cramped  by  a  book-language  not  yet 
flexible  enough  for  the  demands  of  rhythmic  emotion, 
not  yet  sufficiently  popularized  for  the  natural  and  fa- 


152  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

miliar  expression  of  supreme  thought,  not  yet  so  rich  in 
metaphysical  phrase  as  to  render  possible  that  ideal 
representation  of  the  great  passions  which  is  the  aim 
and  end  of  Art,  not  yet  subdued  by  practice  and  general 
consent  to  a  definiteness  of  accentuation  essential  to 
ease  and  congruity  of  metrical  arrangement.  Had  he 
been  born  fifty  years  -later,  his  ripened  manhood  would 
have  found  itself  in  an  England  absorbed  and  angry 
with^he  solution  of  political  and  religious  problems, 
from  which  hisVwhole  nature  was  averse,  instead  of  in 
that  Elizabethan  social  system?  ordered  and  planetary  in 
"  ^  functions  and  degrees  as~T3fl5  angelic  hierarchy  of  the 
Areopagite,  where  his  contemplative  eye  could  crowd  it- 
^seir^ith  various  and  brilliant  picture,  and  whence  his 
impartial  brain  —  one  lobe  of  which  seems  to  have  been 
Normanly  refined  and  the  other  Saxonly  sagacious  — 
could  draw  its  morals  of  courtly  and  worldly  wisdom,  its 
*  lessons  of  prudence  and  magnanimity.  In  estimating 
I  Shakespeare,  it  should  never  be  forgotten,  that,  like 
\  Goethe,  he  was  essentially  observer  and  artist,  and  inca- 
*  pable  of  partisanship.  The  passions,  actions,  sentiments, 
whose  character  and  results  he  delighted  to  watch  and  to 
reproduce,  are  those  of  man  in  society  as  it  existed ;  and 
it  no  more  occurred  to  him  to  question  the  right  of  that 
society  to  exist  than  to  criticise  the  divine  ordination  of 
the  seasons.  His  business  was  with  men  as  they  were, 
not  with  man  as  he  ought  to  be,  —  with  the  human  soul 
as  it  is  shaped  or  twisted  into  character  by  the  complex 
,  experience  of  life,  not  in  its  abstract  essence,  as  some 
thing  to  be  saved  or  lost.  During  the  first  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  centre  of  intellectual  interest 
was  rather  in  the  other  world  than  in  this,  rather  in  the 
region  of  thought  and  principle  and  conscience  than  in 
actual  life.  It  was  a  generation  in  which  the  poet  was, 
and  felt  himself,  out  of  place.  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  our 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  153 

most  imaginative  mind  since  Shakespeare,  found  breath 
ing-room,  for  a  time,  among  the  "  0  altitudines ! "  of 
religious  speculation,  but  soon  descended  to  occupy  him 
self  with  the  exactitudes  of  science.  Jeremy  Taylor, 
who  half  a  century  earlier  would  have  been  Fletcher's 
rival,  compels  his  clipped  fancy  to  the  conventual  dis 
cipline  of  prose,  (Maid  Marian  turned  nun,)  and  waters 
his  poetic  wine  with  doctrinal  eloquence.  Milton  is  saved  i 
from  making  total  shipwreck  of  his  large-utteranced  j  ^ 
genius  on  the  desolate  Noman's  Land  of  a  religious  epic 
only  by  the  lucky  help  of  Satan  and  his  colleagues,  with 
whom,  as  foiled  rebels  and  republicans,  he  cannot  con 
ceal  his  sympathy.  As  purely  poet,  Shakespeare  would 
have  come  too  late,  had  his  lot  fallen  in  that  generation. 
In  mind  and  temperament  too  exoteric  for  a  mystic,  his 
imagination  could  not  have  at  once  illustrated  the  influ 
ence  of  his  epoch  and  escaped  from  it,  like  that  of 
Browne ;  the  equilibrium  of  his  judgment,  essential  to 
him  as  an  artist,  but  equally  removed  from  propagan- 
dism,  whether  as  enthusiast  or  logician,  would  have  un 
fitted  him  for  the  pulpit ;  and  his  intellectual  being  was 
too  sensitive  to  the  wonder  and  beauty  of  outward  life 
and  Nature  to  have  found  satisfaction,  as  Milton's  could, 
(and  perhaps  only  by  reason  of  his  blindness,)  in  a  world 
peopled  by  purely  imaginary  figures.  We  might  fancy 
him  becoming  a  great  statesman,  but  he  lacked  the  social 
position  which  could  have  opened  that  career  to  him. 
What  we  mean  when  we  say  Shakespeare,  is  something 
inconceivable  either  during  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Eighth,  or  the  Commonwealth,  and  which  would  have 
been  impossible  after  the  Restoration. 

All  favorable  stars  seem  to  have  been  in  conjunction 
at  his  nativity.     The  Reformation  had  passed  the  period 
of  its  vinous  fermentation,  and  its  clarified  results  re 
mained  as  an  element  of  intellectual  impulse  and  exhila- 
7* 


JL54  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

ration ;  there  were  small  signs  yet  of  the  acetous  and 
putrefactive  stages  which  were  to  follow  in  the  victory 
and  decline  of  Puritanism.  Old  forms  of  belief  and 
worship  still  lingered,  all  the  more  touching  to  Fancy, 
perhaps,  that  they  were  homeless  and  attainted;  the 
light  of  sceptic  day  was  baffled  by  depths  of  forest  where 
superstitious  shapes  still  cowered,  creatures  of  immemo 
rial  wonder,  the  raw  material  of  Imagination.  The  in 
vention  of  printing,  without  yet  vulgarizing  letters,  had 
made  the  thought  and  history  of  the  entire  past  contem 
poraneous  •.,  while  a  crowd  of  translators  put  every  man 
who  could  read  in  inspiring  contact  with  the  select  souls 
of  all  the  centuries.^  A  new  world  was  thus  opened  to 
intellectual  adventure  at  the  very  time  when  the  keel  of 
Columbus  had  turned  the  first  daring  furrow  of  discov 
ery  in  that  unmeasured  ocean  which  still  girt  the  known 
earth  with  a  beckoning  horizon  of  hope  and  conjecture, 
which  was  still  fed  by  rivers  that  flowed  down  out  of 
primeval  silences,  and  which  still  washed  the  shores  of 
Dreamland.  Under  a  wise,  cultivated,  and  firm-handed 
monarch  also,  the  national  feeling  of  England  grew  rap 
idly  more  homogeneous  and  intense,  the  rather  as  the 
womanhood  of  the  sovereign  stimulated  a  more  chivalric 
loyalty,  —  while  the  new  religion,  of  which  she  was  the 
defender,  helped  to  make  England  morally,  as  it  was 
geographically,  insular  to  the  continent  of  Europe. 

If  circumstances  could  ever  make  a  great  national 
poet,  here  were  all  the  elements  mingled  at  melting-heat 
in  the  alembic,  and  the  lucky  moment  of  projection  was 
clearly  come.  If  a  great  national  poet  could  ever  avail 
himself  of  circumstances,  this  was  the  occasion,  —  and, 
fortunately,  Shakespeare  was  equal  to  it.  Above  all,  we 
may  esteem  it  lucky  that  he  found  words  ready  to  his 
use,  original  and  untarnished,  —  types  of  thought  whose 
sharp  edges  were  unworn  by  repeated  impressions.  In 


SHAKESPEAKE   ONCE   MORE.  155 

reading  Hakluyt's  Voyages,  we  are  almost  startled  now 
and  then  to  find  that  even  common  sailors  could  not  tell 
the  story  of  their  wanderings  without  rising  to  an.  almost 
Odyssean  strain,  and  habitually  used  a  diction  that  we 
should  be  glad  to  buy  back  from  desuetude  at  any  cost. 
Those  who  look  upon  language  only  as  anatomists  of  its 
structure,  or  who  regard  it  as  only  a  means  of  conveying 
abstract  truth  from  mind  to  mind,  as  if  it  were  so  many 
algebraic  formulae,  are  apt  to  overlook  the  fact  that  its 
being  alive  is  all  that  gives  it  poetic  value.  We  do  not 
mean  what  is  technically  called  a  living  language,  —  the 
contrivance,  hollow  as  a  speaking-trumpet,  by  which 
breathing  and  moving  bipeds,  even  now,  sailing  o'er  life's 
solemn  main,  are  enabled  to  hail  each  other  and  make 
known  their  mutual  shortness  of  mental  stores,  —  but 
one  that  is  still  hot  from  the  hearts  and  brains  of  a 
people,  not  hardened  yet,  but  moltenly  ductile  to  new 
shapes  of  sharp  and  clear  relief  in  the  moulds  of  new 
thought.  (C£o  soon  as  a  language  has  become  literary,  so 
soon  as  there  is  a  gap  between  the  speech  of  books  and 
that  of  life,  the  language  becornes,  so  far  as  poetry  is  con 
cerned,  almost  as  dead  as  Latinl  and  (as  in  writing  Latin 
verses)  a  mind  in  itself  essentially  original  become's  in  the 
use  of  such  a  medium  of  utterance  unconsciously  remi- 
niscential  and  reflective,  lunar  and  not  solar,  in  expression 
and  even  in  thought.  For  wTords  and  thoughts  have  a 
much  more  intimate  and  genetic  relation,  one  with  the 
other,  than  most  men  have  any  notion  of ;  and  it  is  one 
thing  to  use  our  mother-tongue  as  if  it  belonged  to  us, 
and  another  to  be  the  puppets  of  an  overmastering  vo 
cabulary.  "Ye  know  not,"  says  Ascham,  "what  hurt 
•ye  do  to  Learning,  that  care  not  for  Words,  but  for 
Matter,  and  so  make  a  Divorce  betwixt  the  Tongue  and 
the  Heart."  Lingua  Toscana  in  bocca  Romana  is  the 
Italian  proverb  ;  and  that  of  poets  should  be,  The  tongue 


156  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE. 

of  the  people  in  the  mouth  of  the  scholar.  I  imply  here 
110  assent  to  the  early  theory,  or,  at  any  rate,  practice, 
of  Wordsworth,  who  confounded  plebeian  modes  of 
thought  with  rustic  forms  of  phrase,  and  then  atoned 
for  his  blunder  by  absconding  into  a  diction  more  Latin 
ized  than  that  of  any  poet  of  his  century. 

Shakespeare  was  doubly  fortunate.  Saxon  by  the  fa 
ther  and  Norman  by  the  mother,  he  was  a  representative 
Englishman.  A  country  boy,  he  learned  first  the  rough 
and  ready  English  of  his  rustic  mates,  who  knew  how  to 
make  nice  verbs  and  adjectives  courtesy  to  their  needs. 
Going  up  to  London,  he  acquired  the  lingua  aulica  pre 
cisely  at  the  happiest  moment,  just  as  it  was  becoming, 
in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word,  modern, — just  as  it 
had  recruited  itself,  by  fresh  impressments  from  the 
Latin  and  Latinized  languages,  with  new  words  to  ex 
press  the  new  ideas  of  an  enlarging  intelligence  which 
printing  and  translation  were  fast  making  cosmopolitan, 
—  words  which,  in  proportion  to  their  novelty,  and  to 
the  fact  that  the  mother-tongue  and  the  foreign  had  not 
yet  wholly  mingled,  must  have  been  used  with  a  more 
exact  appreciation  of  their  meaning.*  It  was  in  Lon 
don,  and  chiefly  by  means  of  the  stage,  that  a  thorough 
amalgamation  of  the  Saxon,  Norman,  and  scholarly  ele 
ments  of  English  was  brought  about.  Already,  Putten- 
ham,  in  his  "  Arte  of  English  Poesy,"  declares  that  the 
practice  of  the  capital  and  the  country  within  sixty  miles 
of  it  was  the  standard  of  correct  diction,  the  jus  et  norma 
loquendi.  Alrpnrly  pippnspr  Tinrl  almost  re-created  English 
poetry,  —  and  it  is  interesting  to  observe,  that,  scholar 
as  he  was,  the  archaic  words  which  he  was  at  first  over- 
fond  of  introducing  are  often  provincialisms  of  purely 
English  original.  Already  Marlowe  had  brought  the 

*  As  where  Ben  Jonson  is  able  to  say,  — 
"  Men  may  securely  sin,  but  safely  never." 


SHAKESPEAEE  ONCE  MORE.  157 

English  unrhymed  pentameter  (which  had  hitherto  justi 
fied  but  half  its  name,  by  being  always  blank  and  never 
verse)  to  a  perfection  of  melody,  harmony,  and  variety 
which  has  never  been  surpassed.  Shakespeare,  then, 
found  a  language  already  to  a  certain  extent  established, 
but  not  yet  fetlocked  by  dictionary  and  grammar  mon 
gers,  —  a  versification  harmonized,  but  which  had  not 
yet  exhausted  all  its  modulations,  nor  been  set  in  the 
stocks  by  critics  who  deal  judgment  on  refractory  feet,  \f 
that  will  dance  to  Orphean  measures  of  which  their 
judges  are  insensible.  That  the  language  was  estab-  • 
lished  is  proved  by  its  comparative  uniformity  as  used 
by  the  dramatists,  who  wrote  for  mixed  audiences,  as 
well  as  by  Ben  Jonson's  satire  upon  Marston's  neolo 
gisms  ;  that  it  at  the  same  time  admitted  foreign  words 
to  the  rights  of  citizenship  on  easier  terms  than  now  is 
in  good  measure  equally  true.  What  was  of  greater  im 
port,  no  arbitrary  line  had  been  drawn  between  high 
words  and  low;  vulgar  then  meant  simply  what  was 
common ;  poetry  had  not  been  aliened  from  the  people  > 
by  the  establishment  of  an  xlpper  House  of  vocables,  ^ 
alone  entitled  to  move  in  the  stately  ceremonials  of 
verse,  and  privileged  from  arrest  while  they  forever  keep 
the  promise  of  meaning  to  the  ear'  and  break  it  to  the 
sense.  The  hot  conception  of  the  poet  had  no  time  to 
cool  while  he  was  debating  the  comparative  respectabil 
ity  of  this  phrase  or  that ;  but  he  snatched  what  word 
his  instinct  prompted,  and  saw  no  indiscretion  in  mak 
ing  a  king  speak  as  his  country  nurse  might  have  taught 
him.*  It  was  Waller  who  first  learned  in  France  that 
to  talk  in  rhyme  alone  comported  with  the  state  of  roy- 

*  "  Vulgnrem  locutionem  appellamus  earn  qua  infantes  adsuefiunt 
ab  adsistentibus  cum  primitus  distinguere  voces  incipiunt:  vel,  quod 
brevius  dici  potest,  vulgarem  locutionem  asserimus  quam  sine  omni 
regula,  nutricem  imitantes,  accepimus.  Dantes,  de  Vulg.  Eloquio,  Lib.  I. 
cap.  i. 


158  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

alty.  In  the  time  of  Shakespeare,  the  living  tongue 
resembled  that  tree  which  Father  Hue  saw  in  Tartary, 
whose  leaves  were  Ianguaged7—-am~eve?y  hidden  root 
of  thought,  every  subtilest  fibre  of  feeling,  was  mated  by 
new  shoots  and  leafage  of  expression,  fed  from  those  un 
seen  sources  in  the  common  earth  of  human  nature. 

The  Cabalists  had  a  notion,  that  whoever  found  out 
the  mystic  word  for  anything  attained  to  absolute  mas 
tery  over  that  thing.  The  reverse  of  this  is  certainly 
true  of  poetic  expression ;  for  he  who  is  thoroughly  pos 
sessed  of  his  thought,  who  imaginatively  conceives  an  idea 
or  image,  becomes  master  of  the  word  that  shall  most  am 
ply  and  fitly  utter  it.  Heminge  and  Condell  tell  us,  ac 
cordingly,  that  there  was  scarce  a  blot  in  the  manuscripts 
they  received  from  Shakespeare ;  and  this  is  the  natural 
corollary  from  the  fact  that  such  an  imagination  as  his 
is  as  -unparalleled  as  the  force,  variety,  and  beauty  of 
the  phrase  in  which  it  embodied  itself*  We  believe 
that  Shakespeare,  like  all  other  great  poets,  instinctively 
used  the  dialect  which  he  found  current,  and  that  his 
words  are  not  more  wrested  from  their  ordinary  mean 
ing  than  followed  necessarily  from  the  unwonted  weight 
of  thought  or  stress  of  passion  they  were  called  on  to 

*  Gray,  himself  a  painful  corrector,  told  Nicholls  that  "  nothing  was 
done  so  well  as  at  the  first  concoction,"  —  adding,  as  a  reason,  "  We 
think  in  words."  Ben  Jonson  said,  it  was  a  pity  Shakespeare  had  not 
blotted  more,  for  that  he  sometimes  wrote  nonsense,  —  and  cited  in 
proof  of  it  the  verse, 

"  Caesar  did  never  wrong  but  with  just  cause." 

The  last  four  words  do  not  appear  in  the  passage  as  it  now  stands, 
and  Professor  Craik  suggests  that  they  were  stricken  out  in  con 
sequence  of  Jonson's  criticism.  This  is  very  probable;  but  we  sus 
pect  that  the  pen  that  blotted  them  was  in  the  hand  of  Master 
Heminge  or  his  colleague.  The  moral  confusion  in  the  idea  was  sure 
ly  admirably  characteristic  of  the  general  who  had  just  accomplished 
a  successful  coup  d'etat,  the  condemnation  of  which  he  would  fancy 
that  he  read  in  the  face  of  every  honest  man  he  met,  and  which  he 
would  therefore  be  forever  indirectly  palliating. 


\ 

SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE;  159 

support.  He  needed  not  to  mask  familiar  thoughts  in  \ 
the  weeds  of  unfamiliar  phraseology ;  for  the  life  that  ^ 
was  in  his  mind  could  transfuse  the  language  of  every 
day  with  an  intelligent  vivacity,  that  makes  it  seem 
lambent  with  fiery  purpose,  and  at  each  new  reading  a 
new  creation.  He  could  say  with  Dante,  that  "  no  word  \ 
had  ever  forced  him  to  say  what  he  would  not,  though 
he  had  forced  many  a  word  to  say  what  it  would  not,"  J 
—  but  only  in  the  sense  that  the  mighty  magic  of  his 
imagination  had  conjured  out  of  it  its  uttermost  secret 
of  power  or  pathos.  When  I  say  that  Shakespeare  used 
the  current  language  of  his  day,  I  mean  only  that  he 
habitually  employed  such  language  as  was  universally 
comprehensible, — that  he  was  not  run  away  with  by  the 
hobby  of  any  theory  as  to  the  fitness  of  this  or  that  com 
ponent  of  English  for  expressing  certain  thoughts  or  feel 
ings.  That  the  artistic  value  of  a  choice  and  noble  dic 
tion  was  quite  as  well  understood  in  his  day  as  in  ours 
is  evident  from  the  praises  bestowed  by  his  contempora 
ries  on  Drayton,  and  by  the  epithet  "  well-languaged  " 
applied  to  Daniel,  whose  poetic  style  is  as  modern  as 
that  of  Tennyson  ;  but  the  endless  absurdities  about 
the  comparative  merits  of  Saxon  and  Norman-French, 
vented  by  persons  incapable  of  distinguishing  one  tongue 
from  the  other,  were  as  yet  unheard  of.  Hasty  general- 
izers  are  apt  to  overlook  the  fact,  that  the  Saxon  was 
never,  to  any  great  extent,  a  literary  language.  Accord 
ingly,  it  held  its  own  very  well  in  the  names  of  com 
mon  things,  but  failed  to  answer  the  demands  of  com 
plex  ideas,  derived  from  them.  The  author  of  "  Piers 
Ploughman  "  wrote  for  the  people,  —  Chaucer  for  the 
court.  We  open  at  random  and  count  the  Latin  *  words 
in  ten  verses  of  the  "  Vision  "  and  ten  of  the  "  Romaunt 

*  We  use  the  word  Latin  here  to  express  words  derived  either  me 
diately  or  immediately  from  that  language. 


160  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

of  the  Rose,"  (a  translation  from  the  French,)  and  find 
the  proportion  to  be  s^ven  in  the  former  and  five  in  the 
latter.  / 

The  organs  of  thef  Saxon  have  always  been  unwilling 
and  stiff  in  learning  languages.  He  acquired  only  about 
V  as  many  British  words  as  we  have  Indian  ones,  and  I 
believe  that  more  French  and  Latin  was  introduced 
through  the  pen  and  the  eye  than  through  the  tongue 
and  the  ear.  For  obvious  reasons,  the  question  is  one 
that  must  be  decided  by  reference  to  prose-writers,  and 
not  poets ;  and  it  is,  we  think,  pretty  well  settled  that 
more  words  of  Latin  original  were  brought  into  the  lan 
guage  in  the  century  between  1550  and  1650  than  in 
the  whole  period  before  or  since,  —  and  for  the  simple 
reason,  that  they  were  absolutely  needful  to  express  new 
modes  and  combinations  of  thought.*  The  language  has- 
gained  immensely,  by  the  infusion,  in  richness  of  syno- 
nyme  and  in  the  power  of  expressing  nice  shades  of 
thought  and  feeling,  but  more  than  all  in  light-footed 
polysyllables  that  trip  singing  to  the  music  of  verse. 
There  are  certain  cases,  it  is  true,  where  the  vulgar 
Saxon  word  is  refined,  and  the  refined  Latin  vulgar,  in 
poetry,  —  as  in. -sweat  and  perspiration;  but  there  are 
vastly  more  in  which  the  Latin  bears  the  bell.  Perhaps 
there  might  be  a  question  between  the  old  English  again- 
rising  and  resurrection  ;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
conscience  is  better  than  inwit,  and  remorse  than  again- 
bite.  Should  we  translate  the  title  of  Wordsworth's 
famous  ode,  "  Intimations  of  Immortality,"  into  "  Hints 


*  The  prose  of  Chaucer  (1390)  and  of  Sir  Thomas  Malory  (translat 
ing  from  the  French,  1470)  is  less  Latinized  than  that  of  Bacon, 
Browne,  Taylor,  or  Milton.  The  glossary  to  Spenser's  Shepherd's  Cal 
endar  (1579)  explains  words  of  Teutonic  and  Romanic  root  in  about 
equal  proportions.  The  parallel  but  independent  development  of 
Scotch  is  not  to  be  forgotten. 


SHAKESPEAEE   ONCE  MOKE.  101 

of  Deathlessness,"  it  would  hiss  like  an  angry  gander. 
If,  instead  of  Shakespeare's 

"  Age  cannot  wither  her, 
Nor  custom  stale  her  infinite  variety," 

we  should  say,  "  her  boundless  manifoldness,"  the  senti 
ment  would  suffer  in  exact  proportion  with  the  music. 
AVhat  homebred  English  could  ape  the  high  Roman 
fashion  of  such  togated  words  as 

"  The  multitudinous  sea  incarnadine," — 

where  the  huddling  epithet  implies  the  tempest-tossed 
soul  of  the  speaker,  and  at  the  same  time  pictures  the 
wallowing  waste  of  ocean  more  vividly  than  the  famous 
phrase  of  JEschylus  does  its  rippling  sunshine  ?  Again, 
sailor  is  less  poetical  than  mariner,  as  Campbell  felt, 
when  he  wrote, 

"  Ye  mariners  of  England," 
and  Coleridge,  when  he  chose 

"  It  was  an  ancient  mariner," 
rather  than 

"  It  was  an  elderly  seaman  " ; 

for  it  is  as  much  the  charm  of  poetry  that  it  suggest  a 
certain  remoteness  and  strangeness  as  familiarity;  and 
it  is  essential  not  only  that  we  feel  at  once  the  meaning 
of  the  words  in  themselves,  but  also  their  melodic  mean 
ing  in  relation  to  each  other,  and  to  the  sympathetic 
variety  of  the  verse.  A  word  once  vulgarized  can  never 
be  rehabilitated.  We  might  say  now  a  'buxom  lass,  or 
that  a  chambermaid  was  buxom,  but  we  could  not  use 
the  term,  as  Milton  did,  in  its  original  sense  of  bowsome, 
—  that  is,  lithe,  gracefully  bending.* 

*  I  believe  that  for  the  last  two  centuries  the  Latin  radicals  of 
English  have  been  more  familiar  and  homelike  to  those  who  use  them 
than  the  Teutonic.  Even  so  accomplished  a  person  as  Professor  Craik, 

K 


162  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

/  '  But  the  secret  of  force  in  writing  lies  not  so  much  in 
I  the  pedigree  of  nouns  and  adjectives  and  verbs,  as  in 
A  having  something  that  you  believe  in  to  say,  and  making 
the  parts  of  speech  vividly  conscious  of  it.  It  is  when 
:  expression  becomes  an  act  of  memory,  instead  of  an 
unconscious  necessity,  that  diction  takes  the  place  of 
warm  and  hearty  speech.  It  is  not  safe  to  attribute 
special  virtues  (as  Bosworth,  for  example,  does  to  the 
Saxon)  to  words  of  whatever  derivation,  at  least  in  poe 
try.  Because  Lear's  "  oak-cleaving  thunderbolts,"  and 
"  the  all-dreaded  thunder-stone  "  in  "  Cymbeline  "  are 
so  fine,  we  would  not  give  up  Milton's  Virgilian  "  ful- 
mined  over  Greece,"  where  the  verb  in  English  con 
veys  at  once  the  idea  of  flash  and  reverberation,  but 
avoids  that  of  riving  and  shattering.  In  the  experiments 
made  for  casting  the  great  bell  for  the  Westminster 
Tower,  it  was  found  that  the  superstition  which  attrib- 

in  his  English  of  Shakespeare,  derives  head,  through  the  German  haupf, 
from  the  Latin  caput!  I  trust  that  its  genealogy  is  nobler,. and  that 
it  is  of  kin  with  c&lum  tueri,  rather  than  with  the  Greek  xe^aArj,  if 
Suidas  be  right  in  tracing  the  origin  of  that  to  a  word  meaning  vacuity. 
Mr.  Craik  suggests,  also,  that  quick  and  wicked  may  be  etymologically 
identical,  because  he  fancies  a  relationship  between  busy  and  the  Ger 
man  bb'se,  though  wicked  is  evidently  the  participial  form  of  A.  S. 
wacan,  (German  weichen,)  to  bend,  to  yield,  meaning  one  who  has  given 
way  to  temptation,  while  quick  seems  as  clearly  related  to  wegan,  meaning 
to  move,  a  different  word,  even  if  radically  the  same.  In  the  "  London 
Literary  Gazette  "  for  November  13, 1858,  I  find  an  extract  from  Miss 
Millington's  "  Heraldry  in  History,  Poetry,  and  Romance,"  in  which, 
speaking  of  the  motto  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  —  Depar  Iloumout  ich 
diene,  —  she  says :  "  The  precise  meaning  of  the  former  word  [Iloumout] 
has  not,  I  think,  been  ascertained."  The  word  is  plainly  the  German 
Hochmuth,  and  the  whole  would  read,  Depar  (Aus)  Ilochmutfi  ich  diene, 
—  "  Out  of  magnanimity  I  serve."  So  entirely  lost  is  the  Saxon  meaning 
of  the  word  knave,  (A.  S.  cnava,  German  knabe,)  that  the  name  nawie, 
assumed  by  railway-laborers,  has  been  transmogrified  into  navigator. 
I  believe  that  more  people  could  tell  why  the  month  of  July  was  so 
called  than  could  explain  the  origin  of  the  names  for  our  days  of  the 
week,  and  that  it  is  oftener  the  Saxon  than  the  French  words  in  Chau 
cer  that  puzzle  the  modern  reader. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  163 

uted  the  remarkable  sweetness  and  purity  of  tone  in 
certain  old  bells  to  the  larger  mixture  of  silver  in  their 
composition  had  no  foundation  in  fact.  It  was  the  cun-  \ 
ning  proportion  in  which  the  ordinary  metals  were 
balanced  against  each  other,  the  perfection  of  form,  and 
the  nice  gradations  of  thickness,  that  wrought  the  mira 
cle.  And  it  is  precisely  so  with  the  language  of  poetry. 
The  genius  of  the  poet  will  tell  him  what  word  to  use 
(else  what  use  in  his  being  poet  at  all  ?) ;  and  even  then, 
unless  the  proportion  and  form,  whether  of  parts  or 
whole,  be  all  that  Art  requires  and  the  most  sensitive 
taste  finds  satisfaction  in,  he  will  have  failed  to  make 
what  shall  vibrate  through  all  its  parts  with  a  silvery 
unison,  —  in  other  words,  a  poem.  , 

I  think  the  component  parts  of  English  were  in  the 
latter  years  of  Elizabeth  thus  exquisitely  proportioned 
one  to  the  other.  Yet  Bacon  had  no  faith  in  his  mother- 
tongue,  translating  the  works  on  which  his  fame  was  to 
rest  into  what  he  called  "the  universal  language,"  and 
affirming  that  "  English  would  bankrupt  all  our  books." 
He  was  deemed  a  master  of  it,  nevertheless ;  and  it  is 
curious  that  Ben  Jonson  applies  to  him  in  prose  the 
same  commendation  which  he  gave  Shakespeare  in  verse, 
saying,  that  he  "  performed  that  in  our  tongue  which 
may  be  compared  or  preferred  either  to  insolent  Greece 
or  haughty  Rome  " ;  and  he  adds  this  pregnant  sentence  : 
"  In  short,  within  his  view  and  about  his  time  were  all 
the  wits  born  that  could  honor  a  language  or  help  study. 
Now  things  daily  fall :  wits  grow  downwards,  eloquence 
grows  backwards."  Ben  had  good  reason  for  what  he 
said  of  the  wits.  Not  to  speak  of  science,  of  Galileo  and 
Kepler,  the  sixteenth  century  was  a  spendthrift  of  literary 
genius.  An  attack  of  immortality  in  a  family  might  j 
have  been  looked  for  then  as  scarlet-fever  would  be  now.  I 
Montaigne,  Tasso,  and  Cervantes  were  born  within  four- 


164  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

teen  years  of  each  other ;  and  in  England,  while  Spenser 
was  still  delving  over  the  propria  quce  maribus,  and 
Raleigh  launching  paper  navies,  Shakespeare  was  stretch 
ing  his  baby  hands  for  the  moon,  and  the  little  Bacon, 
chewing  on  his  coral,  had  discovered  that  impenetrability 
was  one  quality  of  matter.  It  almost  takes  one's  breath 
away  to  think  that  "  Hamlet  "  and  the  "  Novum  Orga- 
non  "  were  at  the  risk  of  teething  and  measles  at  the 
same  time.  But  Ben  was  right  also  in  thinking  that 
eloquence  had  grown  backwards.  He  lived  long  enough 
to  see  the  language  of  verse  become  in  a  measure  tradi 
tionary  and  conventional.  It  was  becoming  so,  partly 
from  the  necessary  order  of  events,  partly  because  the 
most  natural  and  intense  expression  of  feeling  had  been 
in  so  many  ways  satisfied  and  exhausted,  —  but  chiefly 
because  there  was  no  man  left  to  whom,  as  to  Shakespeare, 
perfect  conception  gave  perfection  of  phrase.  Dante, 
among  modern  poets,  his  only  rival  in  condensed  force, 
says  :  "  Optimis  conceptionibus  optima  loquela  conveniet ; 
sed  optimse  conceptiones  non  possunt  esse  nisi  ubi  scien- 
tia  et  ingenium  est ;  .  .  .  .  et  sic  non  omnibus  versifi- 
cantibus  optima  loquela  convenit,  cum  plerique  sine 
scientia  et  ingenio  versificantur."  * 

Shakespeare  must  have  been  quite  as  well  aware  of 
the  provincialism  of  English  as  Bacon  was ;  but  he  knew 
that  great  poetry,  being  universal  in  its  appeal  to  human 
nature,  can  make  any  language  classic,  and  that  the  men 
whose  appreciation  is  immortality  will  mine  through  any 
dialect  to  get  at  an  original  soul.  He  had  as  much  con 
fidence  in  his  home-bred  speech  as  Bacon  had  want  of  it, 
and  exclaims  :  — 

*  De  Vulgari  Eloquio,  Lib.  II.  cap.  i.  ad  Jinem.  I  quote  this 
treatise  as  Dante's,  because  the  thoughts  seem  manifestly  his;  though 
I  believe  that  in  its  present  form  it  is  an  abridgment  by  some  tran 
scriber,  who  sometimes  copies  textually,  and  sometimes  substitutes  his 
own  language  for  that  of  the  original. 


SHAKESPEAEE   ONCE  MORE.  165 

"  Not  marble  nor  the  gilded  monuments 
Of  princes  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme." 

He  must  have  been  perfectly  conscious  of  his  genius, 
and  of  the  great  trust  which  he  imposed  upon  his  native 
tongue  as  the  embodier  and  perpetuator  of  it.  As  he 
has  avoided  obscurities  in  his  sonnets,  he  would  do  so 
a  fortiori  in  his  plays,  both  for  the  purpose  of  immedi 
ate  effect  on  the  stage  and  of  future  appreciation.  Clear 
thinking  makes  clear  writing,  and  he  who  has  shown 
himself  so  eminently  capable  of  it  in  one  case  is  not  to 
be  supposed  to  abdicate  intentionally  in  others.  The 
difficult  passages  in  the  plays,  then,  are  to  be  regarded 
either  as  corruptions,  or  else  as  phenomena  in  the  natu 
ral  history  of  Imagination,  whose  study  will  enable  us  to 
arrive  at  a  clearer  theory  and  better  understanding  of  it. 
While  I  believe  that  our  language  had  two  periods 
of  culmination  in  poetic1  beauty,  —  one  of  nature,  sim 
plicity,  and  truth,  in  the  ballads,  which  deal  only  with 
narrative  and  feeling,  —  another  of  Art,  (or  Nature  as  it 
is  ideally  reproduced  through  the  imagination,)  of  state 
ly  amplitude,  of  passionate  intensity  and  elevation,  in 
Spenser  and  the  greater  dramatists,  —  and  that  Shake 
speare  made  use  of  the  latter  as  he  found  it,  I  by  no 
means  intend  to  say  that  he  did  not  enrich  it,  or  that 
any  inferior  man  could  have  [dipped  the  same  words  outj 
of  the  great  poet's  inkstand^  But  he  enriched  it  only 
by  the  natural  expansion  and  exhilaration  of  which  it 
was  conscious,  in  yielding  to  the  mastery  of  a  genius 
that  could  turn  and  wind  it  like  a  fiery  Pegasus,  making 
it  feel  its  life  in  every  limb.  He  enriched  it  through 
that  exquisite  sense  of  music,  (never  approached  but  by 
Marlowe,)  to  which  it  seemed  eagerly  obedient,  as  if 
every  word  said  to  him, 

"  Eld  me  discourse,  I  will  enchant  thine  ear,"  — 
as  if  every  latent  harmony  revealed  itself  to  him  as  the 


166  SHAKESPEARE  ONCE  MORE. 

gold  to  Brahma,  when  he  walked  over  the  earth  where 
it  was  hidden,  crying,  "  Here  am  I,  Lord !  do  with  me 
/what  thou  wilt !  *}     That  he  used  language  with  that  in- 
I  timate  possession  of  its  meaning  possible  only  to  the 
if  most  vivid  thought  is  doubtless  true ;  but  that  he  wan 
tonly  strained  it  from  its  ordinary  sense,  that  he  found 
it  too  poor  for  his  necessities,  and  accordingly  coined  new 
phrases,  or  that,  from  haste  or  carelessness,  he  violated 
any  of  its  received  proprieties,   I   do  not  believe.      I 
have  said  that  it  was  fortunate  for  him  that  he  came 
upon  an  age  when  our  language  was  at  its  best ;  but  it 
was  fortunate  also  for  us,  because  our  costliest  poetic 
phrase  is  put  beyond  reach  of  decay  in  the  gleaming 
precipitate  in  which  it  united  itself  with  his  thought. 

That  the  propositions  I  have  endeavored  to  establish 
have  a  direct  bearing  in  various  ways  upon  the  qualifi 
cations  of  whoever  undertakes  to  edit  the  works  of 
Shakespeare  will,  I  think,  be  apparent  to  those  who 
consider  the  matter.  The  hold  which  Shakespeare  has 
acquired  and  maintained  upon  minds  so  many  and  so 
various,  in  so  many  vital  respects  utterly  unsympathetic 
and  even  incapable  of  sympathy  with  his  own,  is  one  of 
the  most  noteworthy  phenomena  in  the  history  of  liter 
ature.  That  he  has  had  the  most  inadequate  of  editors, 
that,  as  his  own  Falstaff  was  the  cause  of  the  wit,  so  he 
has  been  the  cause  of  the  foolishness  that  was  in  other 
men,  (as  where  Malone  ventured  to  discourse  upon 
his  metres,  and  Dr.  Johnson  on  his  imagination,)  must 
be  apparent  to  every  one,  —  and  also  that  his  genius 
and  its  manifestations  are  so  various,  that  there  is  no 
,|commentator  but  has  been  able  to  illustrate  him  from 
(his  own  peculiar  point  of  view  or  from  the  results  of  his 
own  favorite  studies.  But  to  show  that  he  was  a  good 
common  lawyer,  that  he  understood  the  theory  of  colors, 
that  he  was  an  accurate  botanist,  a  master  of  the  science 


SHAKESPEAEE   ONCE  MORE.  167 

of  medicine,  especially  in  its  relation  to  mental  disease, 
a  profound  metaphysician,  and  of  great  experience  and 
insight  in  politics,  —  all  these,  while  they  may  very  well 
form  the  staple  of  separate  treatises,  and  prove,  that, 
whatever  the  extent  of  his  learning,  the  range  and  ac 
curacy  of  his  knowledge  were  beyond  precedent  or  later 
parallel,  are  really  outside  the  province  of  an  editor. 

We  doubt  if  posterity  owe  a  greater  debt  to  any  two 
men  living  in  1623  than  to  the  two  obscure  actors  who 
in  that  year  published  the  first  folio  edition  of  Shake 
speare's  plays.  But  for  them,  it  is  more  than  likely  that 
such  of  his  works  as  had  remained  to  that  time  uu- 
printed  would  have  been  irrecoverably  lost,  and  among 
them  were  "  Julius  Csesar,"  "  The  Tempest,"  and  "  Mac 
beth."  But  are  we  to  believe  them  when  they  assert 
that  they  present  to  us  the  plays  which  they  reprinted 
from  stolen  and  surreptitious  copies  "  cured  and  perfect 
of  their  limbs,"  and  those  which  are  original  in  their 
edition  "  absolute  in  their  numbers  as  he  [Shakespeare] 
conceived  them  "  1  Alas,  we  have  read  too  many  theat 
rical  announcements,  have  been  taught  too  often  that 
the  value  of  the  promise  was  in  an  inverse  ratio  to  the 
generosity  of  the  exclamation-marks,  too  easily  to  be 
lieve  that !  Nay,  we  have  seen  numberless  processions 
of  healthy  kine  enter  our  native  village  unheralded  save 
by  the  lusty  shouts  of  drovers,  while  a  wretched  calf, 
cursed  by  stepdame  Nature  with  two  heads,  was  brought 
to  us  in  a  triumphal  car,  avant-couriered  by  a  band  of 
music  as  abnormal  as  itself,  and  announced  as  the  great 
est  wonder  of  the  age.  If  a  double  allowance  of  vitu- 
line  brains  deserve  such  honor,  there  are  few  commen 
tators  on  Shakespeare  that  would  have  gone  afoot,  and 
the  trumpets  of  Messieurs  Heminge  and  Condell  call 
up  in  our  minds  too  many  monstrous  and  deformed 
associations. 


168  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

What,  then,  is  the  value  of  the  first  folio  as  an  au 
thority  1  For  eighteen  of  the  plays  it  is  the  only  au 
thority  we  have,  and  the  only  one  also  for  four  others  in 
their  complete  form.  It  is  admitted  that  in  several  in 
stances  Heminge  and  Condell  reprinted  the  earlier  quarto 
impressions  with  a  few  changes,  sometimes  for  the  better 
and  sometimes  for  the  worse  ;  and  it  is  most  probable 
that  copies  of  those  editions  (whether  surreptitious  or 
not)  had  taken  the  place  of  the  original  prompter's  books, 
as  being  more  convenient  and  legible.  Even  in  these 
cases  it  is  not  safe  to  conclude  that  all  or  even  any  of 
the  variations  were  made  by  the  hand  of  Shakespeare 
himself.  And  where  the  players  printed  from  manu 
script,  is  it  likely  to  have  been  that  of  the  author  1  The 
probability  is  small  that  a  writer  so  busy  as  Shakespeare 
must  have  been  during  his  productive  period  should  have 
copied  out  their  parts  for  the  actors  himself,  or  that  one 
so  indifferent  as  he  seems  to  have  been  to  the  imme 
diate  literary  fortunes  of  his  works  should  have  given 
much  care  to  the  correction  of  copies,  if  made  by  others. 
The  copies  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  Heminge  and 
Co_ndell  were,  it  is  manifest,  in  some  cases,  very  imper 
fect,  whether  we  account  for  the  fact  by  the  burning  of 
the  Globe  Theatre  or  by  the  necessary  wear  and  tear  of 
years,  and  (what  is  worthy  of  notice)  they  are  plainly 
more  defective  in  some  parts  than  in  others.  "  Measure 
for  Measure  "  is  an  example  of  this,  and  we  are  not  sat 
isfied  with  being  told  that  its  ruggedness  of  verse  is  in 
tentional,  or  that  its  obscurity  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
Shakespeare  grew  more  elliptical  in  his  style  as  he  grew 
older.  Profounder  in  thought  he  doubtless  became ; 
though  in  a  mind  like  his,  we  believe  that  this  would 
imply  only  a  more  absolute  supremacy  in  expression. 
But,  from  whatever  original  we  suppose  either  the 
quartos  or  the  first  folio  to  have  been  printed,  it  is  more 


SHAKESPEARE   02? CE   MORE.  1G9 

than  questionable  whether  the  proof-sheets  had  the  ad 
vantage  of  any  revision  other  than  that  of  the  printing- 
office.  Steevens  was  of  opinion  that  authors  in  the 
time  of  Shakespeare  never  read  their  own  proof-sheets  ; 
and  Mr.  Spedding,  in  his  recent  edition  of  Bacon, 
comes  independently  to  the  same  conclusion.*  We 
may  be  very  sure  that  Heminge  and  Condell  did  not, 
as  vicars,  take  upon  themselves  a  disagreeable  task 
which  the  author  would  have  been  too  careless  to  as 
sume. 

Nevertheless,  however  strong  a  case  may  be  made  out 
against  the  Folio  of  1623,  whatever  sins  of  omission  we 
may  lay  to  the  charge  of  Heminge  and  Condell,  or  of 
commission  to  that  of  the  printers,  it  remains  the  only 
text  we  have  with  any  claims  whatever  to  authenticity. 
It  should  be  deferred  to  as  authority  in  all  cases  where 
it  does  not  make  Shakespeare  write  bad  sense,  uncouth 
metre,  or  false  grammar,  of  all  which  we  believe  him  to 
have  been  more  supremely  incapable  than  any,  other 
man  who  ever  wrote  English.  Yet  we  would  not  speak 
unkindly  even  of  the  blunders  of  the  Folio.  They  have 
put  bread  into  the  mouth  of  many  an  honest  editor, 
publisher,  and  printer  for  the  last  century  and  a  half ; 
and  he  who  loves  the  comic  side  of  human  nature  will 
find  the  serious  notes  of  a  variorum  edition  of  Shake 
speare  as  funny  reading  as  the  funny  ones  are  serious. 

*  Vol.  III.  p.  348,  note.  He  grounds  his  belief,  not  on  the  misprint 
ing  of  words,  but  on  the  misplacing  of  whole  paragraphs.  We  were 
struck  with  the  same  thing  in  the  original  edition  of  Chapman's  "  Bi- 
ron's  Conspiracy  and  Tragedy."  And  yet,  in  comparing  two  copies  of 
this  edition,  I  have  found  corrections  which  only  the  author  could  have 
made.  One  of  the  misprints  which  Mr.  Spedding  notices  affords  both 
a  hint  and  a  warning  to  the  conjectural  emendator.  In  the  edition  'of 
"  The  Advancement  of  Learning  "  printed  in  1605  occurs  the  word  dusi- 
nesse.  In  a  later  edition  this  was  conjecturally  changed  to  business  ;  but 
the  occurrence  of  vertigine  in  the  Latin  translation  enables  Mr.  Sped 
ding  to  print  rightly,  dizziness. 
8 


170  SHAKESPEAEE    ONCE   MORE. 

Scarce  a  commentator  of  them  all,  for  more  than  a  hun 
dred  years,  but  thought,  as  Alphonso  of  Castile  did  of 
Creation,  that,  if  he  had  only  been  at  Shakespeare's  el 
bow,  he  could  have  given  valuable  advice ;  scarce  one 
who  did  not  know  off-hand  that  there  was  never  a  sea 
port  in  Bohemia,  —  as  if  Shakespeare's  world  were  one 
which  Mercator  could  have  projected ;  scarce  one  but 
was  satisfied  that  his  ten  finger-tips  were  a  sufficient  key 
to  those  astronomic  wonders  of  poise  and  counterpoise, 
of  planetary  law  and  cometary  seeming-exception,  in  his 
metres ;  scarce  one  but  thought  he  could  gauge  like  an 
ale-firkin  that  intuition  whose  edging  shallows  may  have 
been  sounded,  but  whose  abysses,  stretching  down  amid 
the  sunless  roots  of  Being  and  Consciousness,  mock  the 
plummet ;  scarce  one  but  could  speak  with  condescend 
ing  approval  of  that  prodigious  intelligence  so  utterly 
without  congener  that  our  baffled  language  must  coin 
an  adjective  to  qualify  it,  and  none  is  so  audacious  as  to 
say  Shakesperian  of  any  other.  A  And  yet,  in  the  midst 
of  our  impatience,  we  cannot  help  thinking  also  of  how 
much  healthy  mental  activity  this  one  man  has  been  the 
occasion,  how  much  good  he  has  indirectly  done  to  so 
ciety  by  withdrawing  men  to  investigations  and  habits 
of  thought  that  secluded  them  from  baser  attractions, 
for  how  many  he  has  enlarged  the  circle  of  study  and 
reflection ;  since  there  is  nothing  in  history  or  politics, 
nothing  in  art  or  science,  nothing  in  physics  or  meta 
physics,  that  is  not  sooner  or  later  taxed  for  his  illustra 
tion.  This  is  partially  true  of  all  great  minds,  open  and 
sensitive  to  truth  and  beauty  through  any  large  arc  of 
their  circumference  ;  but  it  is  true  in  an  unexampled 
sense  of  Shakespeare,  the  vast  round  of  whose  balanced 
nature  seems  to  have  been  equatorial,  and  to  have  had  a 
southward  exposure  and  a  summer  sympathy  at  every 
point,  so  that  life,  society,  statecraft,  serve  us  at  last  but 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  171 

as  commentaries  on  him,  and  whatever  we  have  gath 
ered  of  thought,  of  knowledge,  and  of  experience,  con 
fronted  with  his  marvellous  page,  shrinks  to  a  mere 
foot-note,  the  stepping-stone  to  some  hitherto  inaccessi 
ble  verse.  We  admire  in  Homer  the  blind  placid  mirror 
of  the  world's  young  manhood,  the  bard  who  escapes- 
from  his  misfortune  in  poems  all  memory,  all  life  and' 
bustle,  adventure  and  picture  ;  we  revere  in  Dante  that' 
compressed  force  of  lifelong  passion  which  could  make  a, 
private  experience  cosmopolitan  in  its  reach  and  ever^ 
lasting  in  its  significance ;  we  respect  in  Goethe  the. 
Aristotelian  poet,  wise  by  weariless  observation,  witty., 
with  intention,  the  stately  Geheimerrath  of  a  provincial 
court  in  the  empire  of  Nature.  As  we  study  these,  we. 
seem  in  our  limited  way  to  penetrate  into  their  con 
sciousness  and  to  -measure  and  master  their  methods ; 
but  with  Shakespeare  it  is  just  the  other  way  ;  the  more 
we  have  familiarized  ourselves  with  the  operations  of  •• 
our  own  consciousness,  the  more  do  we  find,  in  reading 
him,  that  he  has  been  beforehand  with  us,  and  that, 
while  we  have  been  vainly  endeavoring  to  find  the  door 
of  his  being,  he  has  searched  every  nook  and  cranny  of 
our  own.  While  other  poets  and  dramatists  embody 
isolated  phases  of  character  and  work  inward  from  the 
phenomenon  to  the  special  law  which  it  illustrates,  he 
seems  in  some  strange  way  unitary  with  human  nature 
itself,  and  his  own  soul  to  have  been  the  law  and  life-giv 
ing  power  of  which  his  creations  are  only  the  phenomena. 
We  justify  or  criticise  the  characters  of  other  writers  by 
our  memory  and  experience,  and  pronounce  them  natural 
or  unnatural  ;  but  he  seems  to  have  worked  in  the  very  \ 
stuff"  of  which  memory  and  experience  are  made,  and  wo 
recognize  his  truth  to  Nature  by  an  innate  and  unac- 
quired  sympathy,  as  if  he  alone  possessed  the  secret  of 
the  "  ideal  form  and  universal  mould,"  and  embodied 


172  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

generic  types  rather  than  individuals.  In  this  Cervantes 
alone  has  approached  him ;  and  Don  Quixote  and  Sancho, 
like  the  men  and  women  of  Shakespeare,  are  the  con 
temporaries  of  every  generation,  because  they  are  not 
products  of  an  artificial  and  transitory  society,  but  be 
cause  they  are  animated  by  the  primeval  and  unchanging 
forces  of  that  humanity  which  underlies  and  survives 
the  forever-fickle  creeds  and  ceremonials  of  the  parochial 
corners  which  we  who  dwell  in  them  sublimely  call  The 
World. 

That  Shakespeare  did  not  edit  his  own  works  must  be 
attributed,  we  suspect,  to  his  premature  death.  That 
he  should  not  have  intended  it  is  inconceivable.  Is 
there  not  something  of  self-consciousness  in  the  break 
ing  of  Prospero's  wand  and  burying  his  book,  —  a  sort 
of  sad  prophecy,  based  on  self-knowledge  of  the  nature  of 
that  man  who,  after  such  thaumaturgy,  could  go  down 
to  Stratford  and  live  there  for  years,  only  collecting  his 
dividends  from  the  Globe  Theatre,  lending  money  on 
mortgage,  and  leaning  over  his  gate  to  chat  and  bandy 
quips  with  neighbors  1  His  mind  had  entered  into 
every  phase  of  human  life  and  thought,  had  embodied 
all  of  them  in  living  creations ;  —  had  he  found  all 
empty,  and  come  at  last  to  the  belief  that  genius  and 
its  works  were  as  phantasmagoric  as  the  rest,  and  that 
fame  was  as  idle  as  the  rumor  of  the  pit  1  However 
this  may  be,  his  works  have  come  down  to  us  in  a  con 
dition  of  manifest  and  admitted  corruption  in  some  por 
tions,  while  in  others  there  is  an  obscurity  which  may 
be  attributed  either  to  an  idiosyncratic  use  of  words  and 
condensation  of  phrase,  to  a  depth  of  intuition  for  a 
proper  coalescence  writh  which  ordinary  language  is  in 
adequate,  to  a  concentration  of  passion  in  a  focus  that 
consumes  the  lighter  links  which  bind  together  the 
clauses  of  a  sentence  or  of  a  process  of  reasoning  in 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  173 

common  parlance,  or  to  a  sense  of  music  which  mingles 
music  and  meaning  without  essentially  confounding 
them.  We  should  demand  for  a  perfect  editor,  then, 
first,  a  thorough  glossological  knowledge  of  the  English 
contemporary  with  Shakespeare ;  second,  enough  logical 
acuteness  of  mind  and  metaphysical  training  to  enable 
him  to  follow  recondite  processes  of  thought;  third, 
such  a  conviction  of  the  supremacy  of  his  author  as 
always  to  prefer  his  thought  to  any  theory  of  his  own  • 
fourth,  a  feeling  for  music,  and  so  much  knowledge  of 
the  practice  of  other  poets  as  to  understand  that  Shake 
speare's  versification  differs  from  theirs  as  often  in  kind 
as  in  degree  ;  fifth,  an  acquaintance  with  the  world  as 
well  as  with  books ;  and  last,  what  is,  perhaps,  of  more 
importance  than  all,  so  great  a  familiarity  with  the 
working  of  the  imaginative  faculty  in  general,  and  of  its 
peculiar  operation  in  the  mind  of  Shakespeare,  as  will 
prevent  his  thinking  a  passage  dark  with  excess  of  light, 
iind  enable  him  to  understand  fully  that  the  Gothic 
Shakespeare  often  superimposed  upon  the  slender  col 
umn  of  a  single  word,  that  seems  to  twist  under  it,  but 
does  not,  —  like  the  quaint  shafts  in  cloisters,  —  a 
weight  of  meaning  which  the  modern  architects  of  sen 
tences  would  consider  wholly  unjustifiable  by  correct 
principle. 

Many  years  ago,  while  yet  Fancy  claimed  that  right 
in  me  which  Fact  has  since,  to  my  no  small  loss,  so  suc 
cessfully  disputed,  I  pleased  myself  with  imagining  the 
play  of  Hamlet  published  under  some  alias,  and  as  the 
work  of  a  new  candidate  in  literature.  Then  I  played, 
as  the  children  say,  that  it  came  in  regular  course  before 
some  well-meaning  doer  of  criticisms,  who  had  never 
read  the  original,  (no  very  wild  assumption,  as  things  go,) 
and  endeavored  to  conceive  the  kind  of  way  in  which  he 
would  be  likely  to  take  it.  I  put  myself  in  his  place, 


174  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MOKE. 

and  tried  to  write  such  a  perfunctory  notice  as  I  thought 
would  be  likely,  in  filling  his  column,  to  satisfy  his  con 
science.  But  it  was  a  tour  de  force  quite  beyond  my 
power  to  execute  without  grimace.  I  could  not  arrive 
at  that  artistic  absorption  in  my  own  conception  which 
would  enable  me  to  be  natural,  and  found  myself,  like  a 
bad  actor,  continually  betraying  my  self-consciousness  by 
my  very  endeavor  to  hide  it  under  caricature.  The  path 
of  Nature  is  indeed  a  narrow  one,  and  it  is  only  the  im 
mortals  that  seek  it,  and,  when  they  find  it,  do  not  find 
themselves  cramped  therein.  My  result  was  a  dead  fail 
ure,  —  satire  instead  of  comedy.  I  could  not  shake  off 
that  strange  accumulation  which  we  call  self,  and  report 
honestly  what  I  saw  and  felt  even  to  myself,  much  less 
to  others. 

Yet  I  have  often  thought,  that,  unless  we  can  so  far 
free  ourselves  from  our  own  prepossessions  as  to  be  capa 
ble  of  bringing  to  a  work  of  art  some  freshness  of  sensa 
tion,  and  receiving  from  it  in  turn  some  new  surprise  of 
sympathy  and  admiration,  —  some  shock  even,  it  may 
be,  of  instinctive  distaste  and  repulsion,  —  though  we 
may  praise  or  blame,  weighing  our  pros  and  cons  in  the 
nicest  balances,  sealed  by  proper  authority,  yet  we  shall 
not  criticise  in  the  highest  sense.  On  the  other  hand, 
unless  we  admit  certain  principles  as  fixed  beyond  ques 
tion,  we  shall  be  able  to  render  no  adequate  judgment, 
but  only  to  record  our  impressions,  which  may  be  valu 
able  or  not,  according  to  the  greater  or  less  ductility  of 
the  senses  on  which  they  are  made.  Charles  Lamb,  for 
example,  came  to  the  old  English  dramatists  with  the 
feeling  of  a  discoverer.  He  brought  with  him  an  alert 
curiosity,  and  everything  was  delightful  simply  because 
it  was  strange.  Like  other  early  adventurers,  he  some 
times  mistook  shining  sand  for  gold ;  but  he  had  the 
great  advantage  of  not  feeling  himself  responsible  for 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  175 

the  manners  of  the  inhabitants  he  found  there,  and  not 
thinking  it  needful  to  make  them  square  with  any  West 
minster  Catechism  of  Aesthetics.  Best  of  all,  he  did 
not  feel  compelled  to  compare  them  with  the  Greeks, 
about  whom  he  knew  little,  and  cared  less.  He  took 
them  as  he  found  them,  described  them  in  a  few  pregnant 
sentences,  and  displayed  his  specimens  of  their  growth 
and  manufacture.  When  he  arrived  at  the  dramatists 
of  the  Restoration,  so  far  from  being  shocked,  he  was 
charmed  with  their  pretty  and  unmoral  ways  \  and  what 
he  says  of  them  reminds  us  of  blunt  Captain  Dampier, 
who,  in  his  account  of  the  island  of  Timor,  remarks,  as 
a  matter  of  no  consequence,  that  the  natives  "take  as 
many  wives  as  they  can  maintain,  and  as  for  religion, 
they  have  none." 

Lamb  had  the  great  advantage  of  seeing  the  elder 
dramatists  as  they  were ;  it  did  not  lie  within  his  prov- 
•  ince  to  point  out  what  they  were  not.     Himself  a  frag 
mentary  writer,  he  had  more  sympathy  with  imagination 
•where  it  gathers  into  the  intense  focus  of  passionate 
.phrase  than  with  that  higher  form  of  it,  where  it  is  the 
•faculty  that  shapes,  gives  unity  of  design  and  balanced 
•gravitation  of  parts.     And  yet  it  is  only  this  higher  form 
•of  it  which  can  unimpeachably  assure  to  any  wrork  the 
dignity  and  permanence   of  a  classic  \  for  it  results  in  | 
•that  exquisite  something  called  Style,  which,   like  the  / 
-grace  of  perfect  breeding,  everywhere  pervasive  and  no-  j 
Avhere  emphatic,  makes  itself  felt  by  the  skill  with  which 
-it  effaces  itself,  and  masters  us  at  last  with  a  sense  of  in-  \ 
definable  completeness.     On  a  lower  plane  we  may  detect 
it  in  the  structure  of  a  sentence,  in  the  limpid  expression 
that  implies  sincerity  of  thought ;  but  it  is  only  where  it 
combines  and  organizes,  where  it  eludes  observation  in 
particulars  to  give  the  rarer  delight  of  perfection  as  a 
whole,  that  it  belongs  to  art.     Then  it  is  truly  ideal,  the 


176  SHAKESPEAEE   ONCE   MORE. 

forma  mentis  ceterna,  not  as  a  passive  mould  into  which 
the  thought  is  poured,  but  as  the  conceptive  energy 
which  finds  all  material  plastic  to  its  preconceived  de 
sign.  Mere  vividness  of  expression,  such  as  makes  quot 
able  passages,  comes  of  the  complete  surrender  of  self  to 
the  impression,  whether  spiritual  or  sensual,  of  the  mo 
ment.  It  is  a  quality,  perhaps,  in  which  the  young  poet 
is  richer  than  the  mature,  his  very  inexperience  making 
him  more  venturesome  in  those  leaps  of  language  that 
startle  us  with  their  rashness  only  to  bewitch  us  the 
more  with  the  happy  ease  of  their  accomplishment.  For 
this  there  are  no  existing  laws  of  rhetoric,  for  it  is  from 
such  felicities  that  the  rhetoricians  deduce  and  codify 
their  statutes.  It  is  something  which  cannot  be  im 
proved  upon  or  cultivated,  for  it  is  immediate  and  intui 
tive.  But  this  power  of  expression  is  subsidiary,  and 
goes  only  a  little  way  toward  the  making  of  a  great  poet. 
Imagination,  where  it  is  truly  creative,  is  a  faculty,  and 
not  a  quality ;  it  looks  before  and  after,  it  gives  the  form 
that  makes  all  the  parts  work  together  harmoniously  to 
ward  a  given  end,  its  seat  is  in  the  higher  reason,  and  it 
is  efficient  only  as  a  servant  of  the  will.  Imagination, 
as  it  is  too  often  misunderstood,  is  mere  fantasy,  the 
image-making  power,  common  to  all  who  have  the  gift 
of  dreams,  or  who  can  afford  to  buy  it  in  a  vulgar  drug 
as  De  Quincey  bought  it. 

The  true  poetic  imagination  is  of  one  quality,  whether 
it  be  ancient  or  modern,  and  equally  subject  to  those 
laws  of  grace,  of  proportion,  of  design,  in  whose  free 
service,  and  in  that  alone,  it  can  become  art.  Those 
laws  are  something  which  do  not 

"  Alter  when  they  alteration  find, 
And  bend  with  the  remover  to  remove." 

And  they  are  more  clearly  to  be  deduced  from  the  emi- 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  177 

nent  examples  of  Greek  literature  than  from  any  other 
source.  It  is  the  advantage  of  this  select  company  of 
ancients  that  their  works  are  defecated  of  all  turbid 
mixture  of  contemporaneousness,  and  have  become  to  us 
pure  literature,  our  judgment  and  enjoyment  of  which 
cannot  be  vulgarized  by  any  prejudices  of  time  or  place. 
This  is  why  the  study  of  them  is  fitly  called  a  liberal 
education,  because  it  emancipates  the  mind  from  every 
narrow  provincialism  whether  of  egoism  or  tradition,  and 
is  the  apprenticeship  that  every  one  must  serve  before 
becoming  a  free  brother  of  the  guild  which  passes  the 
torch  of  life  from  age  to  age.  There  would  be  no  dis 
pute  about  the  advantages  of  that  Greek  culture  which 
Schiller  advocated  with  such  generous  eloquence,  if  the 
great  authors  of  antiquity  had  not  been  degraded  from 
teachers  of  thinking  to  drillers  in  grammar,  and  made 
the  ruthless  pedagogues  of  root  and  inflection,  instead 
of  companions  for  whose  society  the  mind  must  put  on 
her  highest  mood.  The  discouraged  youth  too  naturally 
transfers  the  epithet  of  dead  from  the  languages  to  the 
authors  that  wrote  in  them.  What  concern  have  we 
with  the  shades  of  dialect  in  Homer  or  Theocritus,  pro 
vided  they  speak  the  spiritual  lingua  franca  that  abol 
ishes  all  alienage  of  race,  and  makes  whatever  shore  of 
time  we  land  on  hospitable  and  homelike  1  There  is 
much  that  is  deciduous  in  books,  but  all  that  gives  them 
a  title  to  rank  as  literature  in  the  highest  sense  is  peren 
nial.  Their  vitality  is  the  vitality  not  of  one  or  another 
blood  or  tongue,  but  of  human  nature ;  their  truth  is 
not  topical  and  transitory,  but  of  universal  acceptation ; 
and  thus  all  great  authors  seem  the  coevals  not  only  of 
each  other,  but  of  whoever  reads  them,  growing  wiser 
with  him  as  he  grows  wise,  and  unlocking  to  him  one 
secret  after  another  as  his  own  life  and  experience  give 
him  the  key,  but  on  no  other  condition.  Their  mean- 
8*  L 


178  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE*. 

ing  is  absolute,  not  conditional ;  it  is  a  property  of  theirs, 
quite  irrespective  of  manners  or  creed ;  for  the  highest 
culture,  the  development  of  the  individual  by  observa 
tion,  reflection,  and  study,  leads  to  one  result,  whether 
in  Athens  or  in  London.  ^  The  more  we  know  of  ancient 
literature,  the  more  we  are  struck  with  its  modern  ness, 
just  as  the  more  we  study  the  maturer  dramas  of 
Shakespeare,  the  more  we  feel  his  nearness  in  certain 
primary  qualities  to  the  antique  and  classical.)  Yet 
even  in  saying  this,  I  tacitly  make  the  admission  that  it 
is  the  Greeks  who  must  furnish  us  with  our  standard  of 
comparison.  Their  stamp  is  upon  all  the  allowed  meas 
ures  and  weights  of  aesthetic  criticism.  Nor  does  a  con 
sciousness  of  this,  nor  a  constant  reference  to  it,  in  any 
sense  reduce  us  to  the  mere  copying  of  a  bygone  excel 
lence  ;  for  it  is  the  test  of  excellence  in  any  department 
of  art,  that  it  can  never  be  bygone,  and  it  is  not  mere 
difference  from  antique  models,  but  the  way  in  which 
that  difference  is  shown,  the  direction  it  takes,  that  we 
are  to  consider  in  our  judgment  of  a  modern  work.  The 
model  is  not  there  to  be  copied  merely,  but  that  the 
study  of  it  may  lead  us  insensibly  to  the  same  processes 
of  thought  by  which  its  purity  of  outline  and  harmony 
of  parts  were  attained,  and  enable  us  to  feel  that  strength 
is  consistent  with  repose,  that  multiplicity  is  not  abun 
dance,  that  grace  is  but  a  more  refined  form  of  power, 
and  that  a  thought  is  none  the  less  profound  that  the 
limpidity  of  its  expression  allows  us  to  measure  it  at  a 
glance.  To  be  possessed  with  this  conviction  gives  us 
at  least  a  determinate  point  of  view,  and  enables  us  to 
appeal  a  case  of  taste  to  a  court  of  final  judicature, 
whose  decisions  are  guided  by  immutable  principles. 
When  we  hear  of  certain  productions,  that  they  are  fee 
ble  in  design,  but  masterly  in  parts,  that  they  are  inco 
herent,  to  be  sure,  but  have  great  merits  of  style,  v/e 


'SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  179 

know  that  it  cannot  be  true ;  for  in  the  highest  exam 
ples  we  have,  the  master  is  revealed  by  his  plan,  by  his 
power  of  making  all  accessories,  each  in  its  due  relation, 
subordinate  to  it,  and  that  to  limit  style  to  the  rounding 
of  a  period  or  a  distich  is  wholly  to  misapprehend  its 
truest  and  highest  function.  lionne  is  full  of  salient 
verses  that  would  take  the  rudest  March  winds  of  criti 
cism  with  their  beauty,  of  thoughts  that  first  tease  us 
like  charades  and  then  delight  us  with  the  felicity  of 
their  solution;  but  these  have  not  saved  him.  He  is 
exiled  to  the  limbo  of  the  formless  and  the  fragmentary. 
To  take  a  more  recent  instance,  —  Wordsworth  had,  in 
some  respects,  a  deeper  insight,  and  a  more  adequate 
utterance  of  it,  than  any  man  of  his  generation.  But 
it  was  a  piece-meal  insight  and  utterance  ;  his  imagina 
tion  was  feminine,  not  masculine,  receptive,  and  not  crea 
tive.  His  longer  poems  are  Egyptian  sand-wastes,  with 
here  and  there  an  oasis  of  exquisite  greenery,  a  grand 
image,  Sphinx-like,  half  buried  in  drifting  commonplaces, 
or  the  solitary  Pompey's  Pillar  of  some  towering  thought. 
But  what  is  the  fate  of  a  poet  who  owns  the  quarry,  but 
cannot  build  the  poem  1  Ere  the  century  is  out  he  will 
be  nine  parts  dead,  and  immortal  only  in  that  tenth  part 
of  him  which  is  included  in  a  thin  volume  of  "beauties." 
Already  Moxon  has  felt  the  need  of  extracting  this  es 
sential  oil  of  him ;  and  his  memory  will  be  kept  alive, 
if  at  all,  by  the  precious  material  rather  than  the  work 
manship  of  the  vase  that  contains  his  heart.  And  what 
shall  we  forebode  of  so  many  modern  poems,  full  of 
splendid  passages,  beginning  everywhere  and  leading  no 
where,  reminding  us  of  nothing  so  much  as  the  amateur 
architect  who  planned  his  own  house,  and  forgot  the 
staircase  that  should  connect  one  floor  with  another, 
putting  it  as  an  afterthought  on  the  outside  1 

Lichtenberg  says  somewhere,  that  it  was  the  advau- 


180  SHAKESPEARE    ONCE   MORE. 

tage  of  the  ancients  to  write  before  the  great  art  of  writ 
ing  ill  had  been  invented ;  and  Shakespeare  may  be  said 
to  have  had  the  good  luck  of  coming  after  Spenser  (to 
whom  the  debt  of  English  poetry  is  incalculable)  had 
reinvented  the  art  of  writing  well.  But  Shakespeare 
arrived  at  a  mastery  in  this  respect  which  sets  him  above 
all  other  poets*  He  is.  not  only  superior  in  degree,  but 
he  is  also  different  in  kind.  In  that  less  purely  artistic 
sphere  of  style  which  concerns  the  matter  rather  than 
the  form  his  charm  is  often  unspeakable.  How  perfect 
his  style  is  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  it  never 
curdles  into  mannerism,  and  thus  absolutely  eludes  imi 
tation.  Though  here,  if  anywhere,  the  style  is  the  man, 
yet  it  is  noticeable  only,  like  the  images  of  Brutus,  by 
its  absence,  so  thoroughly  is  he  absorbed  in  his  work, 
while  he  fuses  thought  and  word  indissolubly  together, 
till  all  the  particles  cohere  by  the  best  virtue  of  each. 
With  perfect  truth  he  has  said  of  himself  that  he  writes 

"  All  one,  ever  the  same, 
Putting  invention  in  a  noted  weed, 
That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  his  name." 

And  yet  who  has  so  succeeded  in  imitating  him  as  to  re 
mind  us  of  him  by  even  so  much  as  the  gait  of  a  single 
verse?*  Those  magnificent  crystallizations  of  feeling 
and  phrase,  basaltic  masses,  molten  and  interfused  by  the 
primal  fires  of  passion,  are  not  to  be  reproduced  by  the 
slow  experiments  of  the  laboratory  striving  to  parody 
creation  with  artifice.  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  seems  to  think 
that  Shakespeare  has  damaged  English  poetry.  I  wish 
he  had  !  It  is  true  he  lifted  Dryden  above  himself  in  "All 

*  "  At  first  sight,  Shakespeare  and  his  contemporary  dramatists 
seem  to  write  in  stvles  much  alike ;  nothing  so  easy  as  to  fall  into  that 
of  Massinger  and  the  others ;  whilst  no  one  has  ever  yet  produced  one 
scene  conceived  and  expressed  in  the  Shakespearian  idiom.  I  suppose 
it  is  because  Shakespeare  is  universal,  and,  in  fact,  has  no  manner.'1  — 
Coleridge's  Tabletalk,  214. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  181 

for  Love  " ;  but  it  was  Dryden  who  said  of  him,  by  in 
stinctive,  conviction  rather  than  judgment,  that  within 
his  magic  circle  none  dared  tread  but  he.  Is  he  to  blame 
for  the  extravagances  of  modern  diction,  which  are  but 
the  reaction  of  the  brazen  age  against  the  degeneracy  of 
art  into  artifice,  that  has  characterized  the  silver  period 
in  every  literature  1  We  see  in  them  only  the  futile 
effort  of  misguided  persons  to  torture  out  of  language 
the  secret  of  that  inspiration  which  should  be  in  them*' 
selves.  We  do  not  find  the  extravagances  in  Shake 
speare  himself.  We  never  saw  a  line  in  any  modern  poet 
that  reminded  us  of  him,  and  will  venture  to  assert  that 
it  is  only  poets  of  the  second  class  that  find  successful 
imitators.  And  the  reason  seems  to  us  a  very  plain  one. 
The  genius  of  the  great  poet  seeks  repose  in  the  expres 
sion  of  itself,  and  finds  it  at  last  in  style,  which  is  the 
establishment  of  a  perfect  mutual  understanding  be 
tween  the  worker  and  his  material.*  The  secondary  in 
tellect,  on  the  other  hand,  seeks  for  excitement  in  ex 
pression,  and  stimulates  itself  into  mannerism,  which  is 
the  wilful  obtrusion  of  self,  as  style  is  its  unconscious 
abnegation.  No  poet  of  the  first  class  has  ever  left  a 
school,  because  his  imagination  is  incommunicable ;  while, 
just  as  surely  as 'the  thermometer  tells  of  the  neighbor 
hood  of  an  iceberg,  you  may  detect  the  presence  of  a 
genius  of  the  second  class  in  any  generation  by  the  in- 1 
fluence  of  his  mannerism,  for  that,  being  an  artificial 
thing,  is  capable  of  reproduction.  Dante,  Shakespeare, 
Goethe,  left  no  heirs  either  to  the  form  or  mode  of  their 
expression ;  while  Milton,  Sterne,  and  Wordsworth  left 
behind  them  whole  regiments  uniformed  with  all  their 
external  characteristics.  We  do  not  mean  that  great 

*  Pheidias  said  of  one  of  his  pupils  that  he  had  an  inspired  thumb, 
because  the  modelling-clay  yielded  to  its  careless  sweep  a  grace  of 
curve  which  it  refused  to  the  utmost  pains  of  others. 


182  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE. 

poetic  geniuses  may  not  have  influenced  thought,  (though 
we  think  it  would  be  difficult  to  show  how  Shakespeare 
had  done  so,  directly  and  wilfully,)  but  that  they  have 
not  infected  contemporaries  or  followers  with  mannerism. 
The  quality  in  him  which  makes  him  at  once  so  thoroughly 
English  and  so  thoroughly  cosmopolitan  is  that  aeration 
of  the  understanding  by  the  imagination  which  he  has 
in  common  with  all  the  greater  poets,  and  which  is  the 
privilege  of  genius.  The  modern  school,  which  mistakes 
violence  for  intensity,  seems  to  catch  its  breath  when  it 
finds  itself  on  the  verge  of  natural  expression,  and  to 
say  to  itself,  "  Good  heavens  !  I  had  almost  forgotten  I 
was  inspired  !  "  But  of  Shakespeare  we  do  not  even  sus 
pect  that  he  ever  remembered  it.  He  does  not  always 
speak  in  that  intense  way  that  flames  up  in  Lear  and 
Macbeth  through  the  rifts  of  a  soil  volcanic  with  passion. 
He  allows  us  here  and  there  the  repose  of  a  common 
place  character,  the  consoling  distraction  of  a  humorous 
one.  He  knows  how  to  be  equable  and  grand  without 
effort,  so  that  we  forget  the  altitude  of  thought  to  which 
he  has  led  us,  because  the  slowly  receding  slope  of  a 
mountain  stretching  downward  by  ample  gradations  gives 
a  less  startling  impression  of  height  than  to  look  over 
the  edge  of  a  ravine  that  makes  but  a  wrinkle  in  its 
flank. 

Shakespeare  has  been  sometimes  taxed  with  the  bar 
barism  of  profuseness  and  exaggeration.  But  this  is  to 
measure  him  by  a  Sophoclean  scale.  The  simplicity  of 
the  antique  tragedy  is  by  no  means  that  of  expression, 
but  is  of  form  merely.  In  the  utterance  of  great  pas 
sions,  something  must  be  indulged  to  the  extravagance 
of  Nature ;  the  subdued  tones  to  which  pathos  and  sen 
timent  are  limited  cannot  express  a  tempest  of  the  soul. 
The  range  between  the  piteous  "  no  more  but  so,"  in 
which  Ophelia  compresses  the  heart-break  whose  com- 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  183 

pressiou  was  to  make  her  mad,  and  that  sublime  appeal 
of  Lear  to  the  elements  of  Nature,  only  to  be  matched, 
if  matched  at  all,  in  the  "  Prometheus,"  is  a  wide  one, 
and  Shakespeare  is  as  truly  simple  in  the  one  as  in  the 
other.  The  simplicity  of  poetry  is  not  that  of  prose, 
nor  its  clearness  that  of  ready  apprehension  merely. 
To  a  subtile  sense,  a  sense  heightened  by  sympathy, 
those  sudden  fervors  of  phrase,  gone  ere  one  can  say  it 
lightens,  that  show  us  Macbeth  groping  among  the  com 
plexities  of  thought  in  his  conscience-clouded  mind,  and 
reveal  the  intricacy  rather  than  enlighten  it,  while  they 
leave  the  eye  darkened  to  the  literal  meaning  of  the 
words,  yet  make  their  logical  sequence,  the  grandeur  of 
the  conception,  and  its  truth  to  Nature  clearer  than 
sober  daylight  could.  There  is  an  obscurity  of  mist 
rising  from  the  undrained  shallows  of  the  mind,  and 
there  is  the  darkness  of  thunder-cloud  gathering  its 
electric  masses  with  passionate  intensity  from  the  clear 
element  of  the  imagination,  not  at  random  or  wilfully, 
but  by  the  natural  processes  of  the  creative  faculty,  to 
brood  those  flashes  of  expression  that  transcend  rhet 
oric,  and  are  only  to  be  apprehended  by  the  poetic  in 
stinct. 

Ill   that    secondary  office    of   imagination,   where    it 
serves  the  artist,  not  as  the  reason  that  shapes,  but  as 
the  interpreter  of  his  conceptions  into  words,  there  is  a 
distinction  to  be  noticed  between  the  higher  and  lower 
mode  in  which  it  performs   its   function.     It   may  be 
either  creative  or  pictorial,  may  body  forth  the  thought 
or  merely  image  it  forth.     With  Shakespeare,  for  exam-    / 
pie,  imagination  seems  immanent  in  his  very  conscious-  / 
ness ;  with  Milton,  in  his  memory.     In  the  one  it  sends, 
as  if  without  knowing  it,  a  fiery  life  into  the  verse, 

"  Sei  die  Braut  das  Wort, 
Brautigam  der  Geist"; 


184  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

in  the  other  it  elaborates  a  certain  pomp  and  elevation. 
Accordingly,  the  bias  of  the  former  is  toward  over-inten 
sity,  of  the  latter  toward  over-diffuseness.  Shakespeare's 
temptation  is  to  push  a  willing  metaphor  beyond  its 
strength,  to  make  a  passion  over-inform  its  tenement  of 
words;  Milton  cannot  resist  running  a  simile  on  into  a 
fugue.  One  always  fancies  Shakespeare  in  his  best  verses, 
and  Milton  at  the  key-board  of  his  organ.  Shakespeare's 
language  is  no  longer  the  mere  vehicle  of  thought,  it  has 
become  part  of  it,  its  very  flesh  and  blood.  The  pleasure 
it  gives  us  is  unmixed,  direct,  like  that  from  the  smell 
of  a  flower  or  the  flavor  of  a  fruit.  Milton  sets  every 
where  his  little  pitfalls  of  bookish  association  for  the 
memory.  I  know  that  Milton's  manner  is  very  grand. 
It  is  slow,  it  is  stately,  moving  as  in  triumphal  proces 
sion,  with  music,  with  historic  banners,  with  spoils  from 
every  time  and  every  region,  and  captive  epithets,  like 
huge  Sicambrians,  thrust  their  broad  shoulders  between 
us  and  the  thought  whose  pomp  they  decorate.  But  it 
is  manner,  nevertheless,  as  is  proved  by  the  ease  with 
which  it  is  parodied,  by  the  danger  it  is  in  of  degenerat 
ing  into  mannerism  whenever  it  forgets  itself.  Fancy  a 
parody  of  Shakespeare,  —  I  do  not  mean  of  his  words, 
but  of  his  tone,  for  that  is  what  distinguishes  the  master. 
You  might  as  well  try  it  with  the  Venus  of  Melos.  In 
Shakespeare  it  is  always  the  higher  thing,  the  thought, 
the  fancy,  that  is  pre-eminent ;  it  is  Csesar  that  draws 
all  eyes,  and  not  the  chariot  in  which  he  rides,  or  the 
throng  which  is  but  the  reverberation  of  his  supremacy. 
If  not,  how  explain  the  charm  with  which  he  dominates 
in  all  tongues,  even  under  the  disenchantment  of  trans 
lation  1  Among  the  most  alien  races  he  is  as  solidly  at 
home  as  a  mountain  seen  from  different  sides  by  many 
lands,  itself  superbly  solitary,  yet  the  companion  of  all 
thoughts  and  domesticated  in  all  imaginations. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  185 

In  description  Shakespeare  is  especially  great,  and  in 
that  instinct  which  gives  the  peculiar  quality  of  any  ob 
ject  of  contemplation  in  a  single  happy  word  that  colors 
the  impression  on  the  sense  with  the  mood  of  the  mind. 
Most  descriptive  poets  seem  to  think  that  a  hogshead  of 
water  caught  at  the  spout  will  give  us  a  livelier  notion 
of  a  thunder-shower  than  the  sullen  muttering  of  the 
first  big  drops  upon  the  roof.  They  forget  that  it  is  .by 
suggestion,  not  cumulation,  that  profound  impressions 
are  made  upon  the  imagination.  Milton's  parsimony  (so 
rare  in  him)  makes  the  success  of  his 

"  Sky  lowered,  and,  muttering  thunder,  some  sad  drops 
Wept  at  completion  of  the  mortal  sin." 

Shakespeare  understood  perfectly  the  charm  of  indi 
rectness,  of  making .  his  readers  seem  to  discover  for 
themselves  what  he  means  to  show  them.  If  he  wishes 
to  tell  that  the  leaves  of  the  willow  are  gray  on  the 
under' side,  he  does  not  make  it  a  mere  fact  of  observa 
tion  by  bluntly  saying  so,  but  makes  it  picturesquely 
reveal  itself  to  us  as  it  might  in  Nature  :  — 

"  There  is  a  willow  grows  athwart  the  flood, 
That  shows  his  hoar  leaves  in  the  glassy  stream." 

Where  he  goes  to  the  landscape  for  a  comparison,  he 
does  not  ransack  wood  and  field  for  specialties,  as  if  he 
were  gathering  simples,  but  takes  one  image,  obvious, 
familiar,  and  makes  it  new  to  us  either  by  sympathy  or 
contrast  with  his  own  immediate  feeling.  He  always 
looked  upon  Nature  with  the  eyes  of  the  mind.  Thus 
he  can  make  the  melancholy  of  autumn  or  the  gladness 
of  spring  alike  pathetic  :  — 

"  That  time  of  year  thou  mayst  in  me  behold, 
When  yellow  leaves,  or  few,  or  none,  do  hang 
Upon  those  boughs  that  shake  against  the  cold, 
Bare  ruined  choirs  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang." 

Or  again  :  — 


186  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

"  From  thee  have  I  been  absent  in  the  spring, 
When  proud-pied  April,  dressed  in  all  his  trim, 
Hath  put  a  spirit  of  youth  in  everything, 
That  heavy  Saturn  leaped  and  laughed  with  him." 

But  as  dramatic  poet,  Shakespeare  goes  even  beyond 
this,  entering  so  perfectly  into  the  consciousness  of  the 
characters  he  himself  has  created,  that  he  sees  every 
thing  through  their  peculiar  mood,  and  makes  every 
epithet,  as  if  unconsciously,  echo  and  re-echo  it.  The 
seus  asks  Hermia,  — 

"  Can  you  endure  the  livery  of  a  nun, 
For  aye  to  be  in  shady  cloister  mewed, 
To  live  a  barren  sister  all  your  life, 
Chanting  faint  hymns  to  the  cold  fruitless  moon?  " 

When  Romeo  must  leave  Juliet,  the  private  pang  of  the 
lovers  becomes  a  property  of  Nature  herself,  and 

"  Envious  streaks 
Do  lace  the  severing  clouds  in  yonder  east." 

But  even  more  striking  is  the  following  instance  from 
Macbeth :  — 

"  The  raven  himself  is  hoarse 

That  croaks  the  fatal  enterance  of  Duncan 

Under  your  battlements." 

Here  Shakespeare,  with  his  wonted  tact,  makes  use  of  a 
vulgar  superstition,  of  a  type  in  which  mortal  presenti 
ment  is  already  embodied,  to  make  a  common  ground  on 
which  the  hearer  and  Lady  Macbeth  may  meet.  After 
this  prelude  we  are  prepared  to  be  possessed  by  her 
emotion  more  fully,  to  feel  in  her  ears  the  dull  tramp  of 
the  blood  that  seems  to  make  the  raven's  croak  yet 
hoarser  than  it  is,  and  to  betray  the  stealthy  advance 
of  the  mind  to  its  fell  purpose.  For  Lady  Macbeth 
hears  not  so  much  the  voice  of  the  bodeful  bird  as  of 
her  own  premeditated  murder,  and  we  are  thus  made 
her  shuddering  accomplices  before  the  fact.  Every 
image  receives  the  color  of  the  mind,  every  word  throbs 
with  the  pulse  of  one  controlling  passion.  The  epithet 


SHAKESPEAEE   ONCE  MOEE.  187 

fatal  makes  us  feel  the  implacable  resolve  of  the  speaker, 
and  shows  us  that  she  is  tampering  with  her  conscience 
by  putting  off  the  crime  upon  the  prophecy  of  the  Weird 
Sisters  to  which  she  alludes.  In  the  word  battlements, 
too,  not  only  is  the  fancy  led  up  to  the  perch  of  the 
raven,  but  a  hostile  image  takes  the  place  of  a  hospita 
ble  ;  for  men  commonly  speak  of  receiving  a  guest  under 
their  roof  or  within  their  doors.  That  this  is  not  over- 
ingenuity,  seeing  what  is  not  to  be  seen,  nor  meant  to  be 
seen,  is  clear  to  me  from  what  follows.  When  Duncan 
and  Banquo  arrive  at  the  castle,  their  fancies,  free  from 
all  suggestion  of  evil,  call  up  only  gracious  and  amiable 
images.  The  raven  was  but  the  fantastical  creation  of 
Lady  Macbeth' s  over-wrought  brain. 

"  This  castle  hath  a  pleasant  seat,  the  air 
Nimbly  and  sweetly  doth  commend  itself 
Unto  our  gentle  senses.  j 

This  guest  of  summer,' 
The  temple-haunting  martlet,  doth  approve 
By  his  loved  manslonry  that  the  heaven's  breath 
Smells  wooingly  heref^io  jutty,  frieze, 
Buttress,  or  coigne  of  vantage,  but  this  bird 
Hath  made  his  pendent  bed  and  procreant  cradle." 

The  contrast  here  cannot  but  be  as  intentional  as  it  is 
marked.  Every  image  is  one  of  welcome,  security,  and 
confidence.  The  summer,  one  may  well  fancy,  would  be 
a  very  different  hostess  from  her  whom  we  have  just  seen 
expecting  them.  And  why  temple-haunting,  unless  because 
it  suggests  sanctuary "?  0  immaginativa,  che  si  ne  rubi 
delle  cose  difuor,  how  infinitely  more  precious  are  the  in 
ward  ones  thou  givest  in  return !  If  all  this  be  accident, 
it  is  at  least  one  of  those  accidents  of  which  only  this  man 
was  ever  capable.  I  divine  something  like  it  now  and 
then  in  J^schylus,  through  the  mists  of  a  language  which 
will  not  let  me  be  sure  of  what  I  see,  but  nowhere  else. 
Shakespeare,  it  is  true,  had,  as  I  have  said,  as  re 
spects  English,  the  privilege  which  only  first-comers  en- 


188  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MOKE. 

joy.  The  language  was  still  fresh  from  those  sources  at 
too  great  a  distance  from  which  it  becomes  fit  only  for 
the  service  of  prose.  Wherever  he  dipped,  it  came  up 
clear  and  sparkling,  undefiled  as  yet  by  the  drainage  of 
literary  factories,  or  of  those  dye-houses  where  the  ma 
chine-woven  fabrics  of  sham  culture  are  colored  up  to 
the  last  desperate  style  of  sham  sentiment.  Those  who 
criticise  his  diction  as  sometimes  extravagant  should  re 
member  that  in  poetry  language  is  something  more  than 
merely  the  vehicle  of  thought,  that  it  is  meant  to  con 
vey  the  sentiment  as  much  as  the  sense,  and  that,  if 
there  is  a  beauty  of  use,  there  is  often  a  higher  use  of 
beauty. 

What  kind  of  culture  Shakespeare  had  is  uncertain ; 
how  much  he  had  is  disputed ;  that  he  had  as  much 
as  he  wanted,  and  of  whatever  kind  he  wanted,  must 
be  clear  to  whoever  considers  the  question.  Dr.  Farmer 
has  proved,  in  his  entertaining  essay,  that  he  got  every 
thing  at  second-hand  from  translations,  and  that,  where 
his  translator  blundered,  he  loyally  blundered  too. 
But  Goethe,  the  man  of  widest  acquirement  in  modern 
times,  did  precisely  the  same  thing.  In  his  charac 
ter  of  poet  he  set  as  little  store  by  useless  learning 
as  Shakespeare  did.  He  learned  to  write  hexameters, 
not  from  Homer,  but  from  Voss,  and  Voss  found  them 
faulty ;  yet  somehow  Hermann  und  Dorothea  is  more 
readable  than  Luise.  So  far  as  all  the  classicism  then 
attainable  was  concerned,  Shakespeare  got  it  as  cheap  as 
Goethe  did,  who  always  bought  it  ready-made.  For 
such  purposes  of  mere  sesthetic  nourishment  Goethe  al 
ways  milked  other  minds,  —  if  minds  those  ruminators 
and  digesters  of  antiquity  into  asses'  milk  may  be  called. 
There  were  plenty  of  professors  who  were  forever  assidu 
ously  browsing  in  vales  of  Enna  and  on  Pentelican  slopes 
among  the  vestiges  of  antiquity,  slowly  secreting  lacteoua 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  189 

facts,  and  not  one  of  them  would  have  raised  his  head 
from  that  exquisite  pasturage,  though  Pan  had  made 
music  through  his  pipe  of  reeds.  Did  Goethe  wish  to 
work  up  a  Greek  theme  1  He  drove  out  Herr  Bottiger, 
for  example,  among  that  fodder  delicious  to  him  for  its 
very  dryness,  that  sapless  Arcadia  of  scholiasts,  let  him 
graze,  ruminate,  and  go  through  all  other  needful  pro 
cesses  of  the  antiquarian  organism,  then  got  him  quietly 
into  a  corner  and  milked  him.  The  product,  after  stand 
ing  long  enough,  mantled  over  with  the  rich  Goethean 
cream,  from  which  a  butter  could  be  churned,  if  not  pre 
cisely  classic,  quite  as  good  as  the  ancients  could  have 
made  out  of  the  same  material.  But  who  has  ever  read 
the  AchilleiSj  correct  in  all  ?messential  particulars  as  it 
probably  is  1  ^ 

It  is  impossible  to  conceive  that  a  man,  who,  in  other 
respects,  made  such  booty  of  the  world  around  him, 
whose  observation  of  manners  was  so  minute,  and  whose 
insight  into  character  and  motives,  as  if  he  had  been  one 
of  God's  spies,  was  so  unerring  that  we  accept  it  without 
question,  as  we  do  Nature  herself,  and  find  it  more  con 
soling  to  explain  his  confessedly  immense  superiority  by 
attributing  it  to  a  happy  instinct  rather  than  to  the  con 
scientious  perfecting  of  exceptional  powers  till  practice 
made  them  seem  to  work  independently  of  the  will 
which  still  directed  them,  —  it  is  impossible  that  such  a 
man  should  not  also  have  profited  by  the  converse  of 
the  cultivated  and  quick-witted  men  in  whose  familiar 
society  he  lived,  that  he  should  not  have  over  and  over 
again  discussed  points  of  criticism  and  art  with  them, 
that  he  should  not  have  had  his  curiosity,  so  alive  to 
everything  else,  excited  about  those  ancients  whom 
university  men  then,  no  doubt,  as  now,  extolled  without 
too  much  knowledge  of  what  they  really  were,  that  he 
should  not  have  heard  too  much  rather  than  too  little 


190  SHAKESPEAEE   ONCE  MOKE. 

of  Aristotle's  Poetics,  Quinctilian's  Rhetoric,  Horace's  Art 
of  Poetry,  and  the  Unities,  especially  from  Ben  Jonson, 
—  in  short,  that  he  who  speaks  of  himself  as 

"  Desiring  this  man's  art  and  that  man's  scope, 
With  what  he  most  enjoyed  contented  least," 

and  who  meditated  so  profoundly  on  every  other  topic 
of  human  concern,  should  never  have  turned  his  thought 
to  the  principles  of  that  art  which  was  both  the  delight 
and  business  of  his  life,  the  bread-winner  alike  for  soul 
and  body.  Was  there  no  harvest  of  the  ear  for  him 
whose  eye  had  stocked  its  garners  so  full  as  wellnigh  to 
forestall  all  after-comers  ?  Did  he  who  could  so  counsel 
the  practisers  of  an  art  in  which  he  never  arrived  at 
eminence,  as  in  Hamlet's  advice  to  the  players,  never 
take  counsel  with  himself  about  that  other  art  in  which 
the  instinct  of  the  crowd,  no  less  than  the  judgment  of 
his  rivals,  awarded  him  an  easy  pre-eminence  *?  If  he 
had  little  Latin  and  less  Greek,  might  he  not  have  had 
enough  of  both  for  every  practical  purpose  on  this  side 
pedantry]  The  most  extraordinary,  one  might  almost 
say  contradictory,  attainments  have  been  ascribed  to 
him,  and  yet  he  has  been  supposed  incapable  of  what 
was  within  easy  reach  of  every  boy  at  Westminster 
School.  There  is  a  knowledge  that  comes  of  sympathy 
as  living  and  genetic  as  that  which  comes  of  mere  learn 
ing  is  sapless  and  unprocreant,  and  for  this  no  profound 
study  of  the  languages  is  needed. 

If  Shakespeare  did  not  know  the  ancients,  I  think 
they  were  at  least  as  unlucky  in  not  knowing  him.  But 
is  it  incredible  that  he  may  have  laid  hold  of  an  edition 
of  the  Greek  tragedians,  Graece  et  Latine,  and  then,  with 
such  poor  wits  as  he  was  master  of,  contrived  to  worry 
some  considerable  meaning  out  of  them  ]  There  are  at 
least  one  or  two  coincidences  which,  whether  accidental 
or  not,  are  curious,  and  which  I  do  not  remember  to 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  191 

have  seen  noticed.  In  the  Electra  of  Sophocles,  which 
is  almost  identical  in  its  leading  motive  with  Hamlet,  the 
Chorus  consoles  Electra  for  the  supposed  death  of  Ores 
tes  in  the  same  commonplace  way  which  Hamlet's  uncle 
tries  with  him. 

0VTJTOU  ire^VKM  rrarpo?,  'HXeKTpa,  <f>povet  • 
©t/rjTbs  8'  'Ope'a-Trj?  •  Stare  M  Xiav  oreVe, 
Ilao-tv  yap  r;|u.tv  TOUT'  64>eiA.eTai  Trafletv. 

"  Your  father  lost  a  father; 
That  father  lost,  lost  his.  ...» 
But  to  persever 
In  obstinate  condolement  is  a  course 

Of  impious  stubbornness 

'T  is  common;  all  that  live  must  die." 

Shakespeare  expatiates  somewhat  more  largely,  but  the 
sentiment  in  both  cases  is  almost  verbally  identical. 
The  resemblance  is  probably  a  chance  one,  for  common 
place  and  consolation  were  always  twin  sisters,  whom 
always  to  escape  is  given  to  no  man ;  but  it  is  neverthe- 
less  curious.  Here  is  another,  from  the  (Edipus  Colo- 
neus  :  — 

Tot?  TOI  ftutototf  X"  £PaX^s  *"*?  Me'Yav> 
"  Thrice  is  he  armed  that  hath  his  quarrel  just." 
Hamlet's  "prophetic  soul"  may  be  matched  with  the 
7rp6fj.avTt.s  Qvp.6s  of  Peleus,   (Eurip.  Androm.  1075,)  and 
his  "  sea  of  troubles,"  with  the  KUKWV  neXayos  of  Theseus 
in  the  Hippolytus,   or  of  the   Chorus   in  the  Hercules 
Furens.      And,    for    manner    and    tone,    compare    the 
speeches  of  Pheres  in  the  Alcestis,  and  Jocasta  in  the 
Pkcenissce,  with  those  of  Claudio  in  Measure  for  Measure, 
and  Ulysses  in  Troilus  and  Cressida. 

The  Greek  dramatists  were  somewhat  fond  of  a  trick 
of  words  in  which  there  is  a  reduplication  of  sense  as  well 
as  of  assonance,  as  in  the  Electra :  — 

"AXeKTpa  y^pacTKOVo-av  dvujaeVata  re. 

So  Shakespeare  :  — 

"  Unhouseled,  disappointed,  unaneled  " ; 


192  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

and  Milton  after  him,  or,  more  likely,  after  the  Greek  :  — 

"  Unrespited,  unpitied,  unreprieved."  * 

I  mention  these  trifles,  in  passing,  because  they  have 
interested  me,  and  therefore  may  interest  others.  I  lay 
no  stress  upon  them,  for,  if  once  the  conductors  of  Shake 
speare's  intelligence  had  been  put  in  connection  with 
those  Attic  brains,  he  would  have  reproduced  their  mes 
sage  in  a  form  of  his  own.  They  would  have  inspired, 
and  not  enslaved  him.  His  resemblance  to  them  is  that 
of  consanguinity,  more  striking  in  expression  than  in 
mere  resemblance  of  feature.  The  likeness  between  the 
Clytemnestra  —  yvvamos  dvdpo[3ov\ov  I\TTI£OV  Keap  —  of 
^Eschylus  and  the  Lady  Macbeth  of  Shakespeare  was  too 
remarkable  to  have  escaped  notice.  That  between  the 
two  poets  in  their  choice  of  epithets  is  as  great,  though 
more  difficult  of  proof.  Yet  I  think  an  attentive  student 
of  Shakespeare  cannot  fail  to  be  reminded  of  something 
familiar  to  him  in  such  phrases  as  "flame-eyed  fire," 
"  flax-winged  ships,"  "  star-neighboring  peaks,"  the  rock 
Salmydessus, 

"  Rude  jaw  of  the  sea, 
Harsh  hostess  of  the  seaman,  step-mother 
Of  ships," 

and  the  beacon  with  its  "speaking  eye  of  fire."  Surely 
there  is  more  than  a  verbal,  there  is  a  genuine,  similar 
ity  between  the  avripiBpov  ycXcurpa  and  "  the  unnumbered 
beach"  and  "multitudinous  sea."  JEschylus,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  willing,  just  as  Shakespeare  is,  to  risk  the  pros 
perity  of  a  verse  upon  a  lucky  throw  of  words,  which 
may  come  up  the  sices  of  hardy  metaphor  or  the  ambs- 

*  The  best  instance  I  remember  is  in  the  Frogs,  where  Bacchus 
pleads  his  inexperience  at  the  oar,  and  says  he  is 

arreipo?,  o.0aAaTTo>TO?,  acraAa^uVio?, 

which  might  be  rendered, 

Unskilled,  unsea-soned,  and  un-Salamised. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  193 

ace  of  conceit.  There  is  such  a  difference  between  far- 
reaching  and  far-fetching !  Poetry,  to  be  sure,  is  always 
that  daring  one  step  beyond,  which  brings  the  right  rnau 
to  fortune,  but  leaves  the  wrong  one  in  the  ditch,  and 
its  law  is,  Be  bold  once  and  again,  yet  be  not  over-bold. 
It  is  true,  also,  that  masters  of  language  are  a  little  apt 
to  play  with  it.  But  whatever  fault  may  be  found  with 
Shakespeare  in  this  respect  will  touch  a  tender  spot  in 
yEschylus  also.  Does  he  sometimes  overload  a  word,  so 
that  the  language  not  merely,  as  Dryden  says,  bends 
under  him,  but  fairly  gives  way,  and  lets  the  reader's 
mind  down  with  the  shock  as  of  a  false  step  in  taste  ? 
He  has  nothing  worse  than  neXayos  avQovv  vfKpols.  A 
criticism,  shallow  in  human  nature,  however  deep  in  Camp 
bell's  Rhetoric,  has  blamed  him  for  making  persons,  under 
great  excitement  of  sorrow,  or  whatever  other  emotion, 
parenthesize  some  trifling  play  upon  words  in  the  very 
height  of  their  passion.  Those  who  make  such  criticisms 
have  either  never  felt  a  passion  or  seen  one  in  action,  or 
else  they  forget  the  exaltation  of  sensibility  during  such 
crises,  so  that  the  attention,  whether  of  the  senses  or  the 
mind,  is  arrested  for  the  moment  by  what  would  be  over 
looked  in  ordinary  moods.  The  more  forceful  the  cur 
rent,  the  more  sharp  the  ripple  from  any  alien  substance 
interposed.  A  passion  that  looks  forward,  like  revenge 
or  lust  or  greed,  goes  right  to  its  end,  and  is  straight 
forward  in  its  expression ;  but  a  tragic  passion,  which  is 
in  its  nature  unavailing,  like  disappointment,  regret  of 
the  inevitable,  or  remorse,  is  reflective,  and  liable  to  be 
continually  diverted  by  the  suggestions  of  fancy.  The 
one  is  a  concentration  of  the  will,  which  intensifies  the 
character  and  the  phrase  that  expresses  it ;  in  the  other, 
the  will  is  helpless,  and,  as  in  insanity,  while  the  flow  of 
the  mind  sets  imperatively  in  one  direction,  it  is  liable 
to  almost  ludicrous  interruptions  and  diversions  upon 

9  M 


194  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

the  most  trivial  hint  of  involuntary  association.  I  am 
ready  to  grant  that  Shakespeare  sometimes  allows  his 
characters  to  spend  time,  that  might  be  better  employed, 
in  carving  some  cherry-stone  of  a  quibble ;  *  that  he  is 
sometimes  tempted  away  from  the  natural  by  the  quaint ; 
that  he  sometimes  forces  a  partial,  even  a  verbal,  anal 
ogy  between  the  abstract  thought  and  the  sensual  image 
into  an  absolute  identity,  giving  us  a  kind  of  serious 
pun.  In  a  pun  our  pleasure  arises  from  a  gap  in  the 
logical  nexus  too  wide  for  the  reason,  but  which  the  ear 
can  bridge  in  an  instant.  "  Is  that  your  own  hare,  or  a 
wig  ? "  The  fancy  is  yet  more  tickled  where  logic  is 
treated  with  a  mock  ceremonial  of  respect. 

"  His  head  was  turned,  and  so  he  chewed 
His  pigtail  till  he  died." 

Now  when  this  kind  of  thing  is  done  in  earnest,  the  re 
sult  is  one  of  those  ill-distributed  syllogisms  which  in 
rhetoric  are  called  conceits. 

"  Hard  was  the  hand  that  struck  the  blow, 
Soft  was  the  heart  that  bled." 

I  have  seen  this  passage  from  Warner  cited  for  its 
beauty,  though  I  should  have  thought  nothing  could  be 
worse,  had  I  not  seen  General  Morris's 

"  Her  heart  and  morning  broke  together 
In  tears." 

Of  course,  I  would  not  rank  with  these  Gloucester's 
"  What !  will  the  aspiring  blood  of  Lancaster 
Sink  in  the  ground  ?    I  thought  it  would  have  mounted  " ; 

though  as  mere  rhetoric  it  belongs  to  the  same  class,  f 
*  So  Euripides  (copied  by  Theocritus,  Id.  xxvii.):  — 

HevOevg  6"  brru>?  M  rrevOos  eio-ouret  60/1x015.     (Bacchat,  363.) 
*Eo-uj<J>p6io7crei'  ov/c  e^oucra  a-iafypovzlv.    (Hippol.,  1037.) 

So  Calderon:  "  Y  apenas  llega,  cuando  llega  a  penas." 

t  I  have  taken  the  first  passage  in  point  that  occurred  to  my  mem 
ory.  It  may  not  be  Shakespeare's,  though  probably  his.  The  ques 
tion  of  authorship  is,  I  think,  settled,  so  far  as  criticism  can  do  it,  in 
Mr.  Grant  White's  admirable  essay  appended  to  the  Second  Part  of 
Henry  VI. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  195 

It  might  be  defended  as  a  bit  of  ghastly  humor  charac 
teristic  of  the  speaker.  But  at  any  rate  it  is  not  with 
out  precedent  in  the  two  greater  Greek  tragedians.  In 
a  chorus  of  the  Seven  against  Thebes  we  have  :  — 

ev  Se  yaict 


Zwa 

Me'/xiKTai,  Kapra  5"  el<r*  o/u.atp.ot. 

And  does  not  Sophocles  make  Ajax  in  his  despair  quibble 
upon  his  own  name  quite  in  the  Shakespearian  fashion, 
under  similar  circumstances  1  Nor  does  the  coarseness 
with  which  our  great  poet  is  reproached  lack  an  JSschy- 
lean  parallel.  Even  the  Nurse  in  Romeo  and  Juliet 
would  have  found  a  true  gossip  in  her  of  the  Agamem 
non,  who  is  so  indiscreet  in  her  confidences  concerning 
the  nursery  life  of  Orestes.  Whether  Raleigh  is  right 
or  not  in  warning  historians  against  following  truth  too 
close  upon  the  heels,  the  caution  is  a  good  one  for  poets 
as  respects  truth  to  Nature.  But  it  is  a  mischievous 
fallacy  in  historian  or  critic  to  treat  as  a  blemish  of  the 
man  what  is  but  the  common  tincture  of  his  age.  It  is 
to  confound  a  spatter  of  mud  with  a  moral  stain. 

But  I  have  been  led  away  from  my  immediate  pur 
pose.  I  did  not  intend  to  compare  Shakespeare  with 
the  ancients,  much  less  to  justify  his  defects  by  theirs. 
Shakespeare  himself  has  left  us  a  pregnant  satire  on 
dogmatical  and  categorical  aesthetics  (which  commonly 
in  discussion  soon  lose  their  ceremonious  tails  and  are 
reduced  to  the  internecine  dog  and  cat  of  their  bald 
first  syllables)  in  the  cloud-scene  between  Hamlet  and 
Polonius,  suggesting  exquisitely  how  futile  is  any  at 
tempt  at  a  cast-iron  definition  of  those  perpetually 
metamorphic  impressions  of  the  beautiful  whose  source 
is  as  much  in  the  man  who  looks  as  in  the  thing  he  sees. 
In  the  fine  arts  a  thing  is  either  good  in  itself  or  it  is 
nothing.  It  neither  gains  nor  loses  by  having  it  shown 


196  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE. 

that  another  good  thing  was  also  good  in  itself,  any 
more  than  a  bad  thing  profits  by  comparison  with  an 
other  that  is  worse.  The  final  judgment  of  the  world 
is  intuitive,  and  is  based,  not  on  proof  that  a  work  pos 
sesses  some  of  the  qualities  of  another  whose  greatness 
is  acknowledged,  but  on  the  immediate  feeling  that  it 
carries  to  a  high  point  of  perfection  certain  qualities" 
proper  to  itself.  One  does  not  flatter  a  fine  pear  by 
comparing  it  to  a  fine  peach,  nor  learn  what  a  fine  peach 
is  by  tasting  ever  so  many  poor  ones.  The  boy  who 
makes  his  first  bite  into  one  does  not  need  to  ask  his 
father  if  or  how  or  why  it  is  good.  Because  continuity 
is  a  merit  in  some  kinds  of  writing,  shall  we  refuse  our 
selves  to  the  authentic  charm  of  Montaigne's  want  of  it  1 
I  have  heard  people  complain  of  French  tragedies  be 
cause  they  were  so  very  French.  This,  though  it  may 
not  be  to  some  particular  tastes,  and  may  from  one  point 
of  view  be  a  defect,  is  from  another  and  far  higher  a 
distinguished  merit.  It  is  their  flavor,  as  direct  a  telltale 
of  the  soil  whence  they  drew  it  as  that  of  French  wines 
is.  Suppose  we  should  tax  the  Elgin  marbles  with  be 
ing  too  Greek  1  When  will  people,  nay,  when  will  even 
critics,  get  over  this  self-defrauding  trick  of  cheapening 
the  excellence  of  one  thing  by  that  of  another,  this  con 
clusive  style  of  judgment  which  consists  simply  in  be 
longing  to  the  other  parish  1  As  one  grows  older,  one 
loses  many  idols,  perhaps  comes  at  last  to  have  none  at 
all,  though  he  may  honestly  enough  uncover  in  defer 
ence  to  the  worshippers  before  any  shrine.  But  for  the 
seeming  loss  the  compensation  is  ample.  These  saints 
of  literature  descend  from  their  canopied  remoteness  to 
be  even  more  precious  as  men  like  ourselves,  our  com 
panions  in  field  and  street,  speaking  the  same  tongue, 
though  in  many  dialects,  and  owning  one  creed  under 
the  most  diverse  masks  of  form. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  197 

Much,  of  that  merit  of  structure  which  is  claimed  for 
the  ancient  tragedy  is  due,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  to  cir 
cumstances  external  to  the  drama  itself,  —  to  custom, 
to  convention,  to  the  exigencies  of  the  theatre.  It  is 
formal  rather  than  organic.  The  Prometheus  seems  to 
me  one  of  the  few  Greek  tragedies  in  which  the  whole 
creation  has  developed  itself  in  perfect  proportion  from 
one  central  germ  of  living  conception.  The  motive  of 
the  ancient  drama  is  generally  outside  of  it,  while  in 
the  modern  (at  least  in  the  English)  it  is  necessarily 
within.  Goethe,  in  a  thoughtful  essay,*  written  many 
years  later  than  his  famous  criticism  of  Hamlet  in 
Wilhelm  Meister,  says  that  the  distinction  between  the 
two  is  the  difference  between  sollen  and  wollen,  that  is, 
between  must  and  would.  He  means  that  in  the  Greek 
drama  the  catastrophe  is  foreordained  by  an  inexorable 
Destiny,  while  the  element  of  Freewill,  and  consequently 
of  choice,  is  the  very  axis  of  the  modern.  The  defini 
tion  is  conveniently  portable,  but  it  has  its  limitations. 
Goethe's  attention  was  too  exclusively  fixed  on  the  Fate 
tragedies  of  the  Greeks,  and  upon  Shakespeare  among 
the  moderns.  In  the  Spanish  drama,  for  example,  cus 
tom,  loyalty,  honor,  and  religion  are  as  imperative  and 
as  inevitable  as  doom.  In  the  Antigone,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  crisis  lies  in  the  character  of  the  protagonist. 
In  this  sense  it  is  modern,  and  is  the  first  example  of 
true  character-painting  in  tragedy.  But,  from  whatever 
cause,  that  exquisite  analysis  of  complex  motives,  and 
the  display  of  them  in  action  and  speech,  which  consti 
tute  for  us  the  abiding  charm  of  fiction,  were  quite  un 
known  to  the  ancients.  They  reached  their  height  in 
Cervantes  and  Shakespeare,  and,  though  on  a  lower 
plane,  still  belong  to  the  upper  region  of  art  in  Le  Sage, 
Moliere,  and  Fielding.  The  personages  of  the  Greek 

*  Shakspeare  und  kein  Ende. 


198  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

tragedy  seem  to  be  commonly  rather  types  than  individ 
uals.  In  the  modern  tragedy,  certainly  in  the  four 
greatest  of  Shakespeare's  tragedies,  there  is  still  some 
thing  very  like  Destiny,  only  the  place  of  it  is  changed. 
It  is  no  longer  above  man,  but  in  him ;  yet  the  catas 
trophe  is  as  sternly  foredoomed  in  the  characters  of  Lear, 
Othello,  Macbeth,  and  Hamlet  as  it  could  be  by  an  in 
fallible  oracle.  In  Macbeth,  indeed,  the  Weird  Sisters 
introduce  an  element  very  like  Fate  ;  but  generally  it 
may  be  said  that  with  the  Greeks  the  character  is  in 
volved  in  the  action,  while  with  Shakespeare  the  action 
is  evolved  from  the  character.  In  the  one  case,  the  mo 
tive  of  the  play  controls  the  personages ;  in  the  other, 
the  chief  personages  are  in  themselves  the  motive  to 
which  all  else  is  subsidiary.  In  any  comparison,  there 
fore,  of  Shakespeare  with  the  ancients,  we  are  not  to 
contrast  him  with  them  as  unapproachable  models,  but 
to  consider  whether  he,  like  them,  did  not  consciously  en 
deavor,  under  the  circumstances  and  limitations  in  which 
he  found  himself,  to  produce  the  most  excellent  thing 
possible,  a  model  also  in  its  own  kind,  —  whether  higher 
or  lower  in  degree  is  another  question.  The  only  fair 
comparison  would  be  between  him  and  that  one  of  his 
contemporaries  who  endeavored  to  anachronize  himself, 
so  to  speak,  and  to  subject  his  art,  so  far  as  might  be,  to 
the  laws  of  classical  composition.  Ben  Jonson  was  a 
great  man,  and  has  sufficiently  proved  that  he  had  an 
eye  for  the  external  marks  of  character ;  but  when  he 
would  make  a  whole  of  them,  he  gives  us  instead  either 
a  bundle  of  humors  or  an  incorporated  idea.  With 
Shakespeare  the  plot  is  an  interior  organism,  in  Jonson 
an  external  contrivance.  It  is  the  difference  between 
man  and  tortoise.  In  the  one  the  osseous  structure  is 
out  of  sight,  indeed,  but  sustains  the  flesh  and  blood 
that  envelop  it,  while  the  other  is  boxed  up  and  impris 
oned  in  his  bones. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  199 

I  have  been  careful  to  confine  myself  to  what  may  be 
called  Shakespeare's  ideal  tragedies.     In  the  purely  his 
torical  or  chronicle  plays,  the  conditions  are   different, 
and  his  imagination  submits  itself  to  the  necessary  re 
strictions  on  its  freedom  of  movement.      Outside   the 
tragedies  also,  the  Tempest  makes  an  exception  worthy 
of  notice.     If  I  read  it  rightly,  it  is  an  example  of  how 
a  great  poet  should  write   allegory,  —  not  embodyin 
metaphysical  abstractions,  but  giving  us  ideals  abstracted 
from  life  itself,  suggesting  an  under-meaning  everywhere, 
forcing  it  upon  us  nowhere,  tantalizing  the  mind  with 
hints  that  imply  so  much  and  tell  so  little,  and  yet  keep 
the  attention  all  eye  and  ear  with  eager,  if  fruitless,  ex 
pectation.     Here  the  leading  characters  are  not  merely 
typical,  but  symbolical,  —  that  is,  they  do  not  illustrate 
a  class    of  persons,   they   belong  to   universal   Nature. 
Consider  the  scene  of  the  play.     Shakespeare  is  wont  to 
take  some  familiar  story,  to  lay  his  scene  in  some  place 
the  name  of  which,  at  least,  is  familiar,  —  well  knowing 
the  reserve  of  power  that  lies  in  the  familiar  as  a  back 
ground,  when  things  are  set  in  front  of  it  under  a  new 
and  unexpected  light.     But  in  the  Tempest  the  scene  is 
laid  nowhere,  or  certainly  in  no  country  laid  down  on 
any  map.     Nowhere,  then  1     At  once  nowhere  and  any 
where,  —  for  it  is  in  the  soul  of  man,  that  still  vexed 
island  hung  between  the  upper  and  the  nether  world, 
and  liable  to  incursions  from  both.     There  is  scarce  a 
play  of  Shakespeare's  in  which  there  is  such  variety  of 
character,  none  in  which  character  has  so  little  to  do  in 
the   carrying  on  and  development  of  the  story.      But 
consider  for  a  moment  if  ever  the  Imagination  has  been 
so  embodied  as  in  Prospero,  the  Fancy  as  in  Ariel,  the 
brute  Understanding  as  in  Caliban,  who,  the  moment 
his  poor  wits  are  warmed  with  the   glorious  liquor  of 
Stephano,  plots  rebellion  against  his  natural  lord,  the 


200  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

higher  Reason.     Miranda  is  mere  abstract  Womanhood, 
as  truly  so  before  she  sees  Ferdinand  as  Eve  before  she 
was  wakened  to  consciousness  by  the  echo  of  her  own 
nature   coming  back  to  her,  the   same,  and  yet  not  the 
same,  from  that  of  Adam.     Ferdinand,  again,  is  nothing 
more  than  Youth,  compelled  to  drudge  at  something  he 
despises,  till  the  sacrifice  of  will  and  abnegation  of  self 
win  him  his  ideal  in  Miranda.     The  subordinate  person 
ages  are  simply  types ;  Sebastian  and  Antonio,  of  weak 
character  and  evil  ambition ;  Gonzalo,  of  average  sense 
and  honesty;    Adrian  and    Francisco,  of   the   walking 
gentlemen  who  serve  to  fill  up  a  world.     They  are  not 
characters  in  the  same   sense  with  lago,  Falstaff,  Shal 
low,   or  Leontius ;  and  it  is  curious  how  every  one  of 
them  loses  his  way  in  this  enchanted  island  of  life,  all 
the  victims  of  one   illusion  after  another,  except  Pros- 
pero,  whose  ministers  are  purely  ideal.     The  whole  play, 
indeed,  is  a  succession  of  illusions,  winding  up  with  those 
solemn  words  of  the  great  enchanter  who  had  summoned 
to    his    service    every  shape  of   merriment   or  passion, 
•pvery  figure  in  the  great  tragi-comedy  of  life,  and  who 
J  was  now  bidding  farewell  to  the  scene  of  his  triumphs. 
Ss    For  in  Prospero  shall  we  not  recognize  the  Artist  him 
self,  — 

"  That  did  not  better  for  his  life  provide 
Than  public  means  which  public  manners  breeds, 
Whence  comes  it  that  his  name  receives  a  brand,"  — 

who  has  forfeited  a  shining  place  in  the  world's  eye  by 
devotion  to  his  art,  and  who,  turned  adrift  on  the  ocean 
of  life  in  the  leaky  carcass  of  a  boat,  has  shipwrecked 
on  that  Fortunate  Island  (as  men  always  do  who  find 
their  true  vocation)  where  he  is  absolute  lord,  making 
all  the  powers  of  Nature  serve  him,  but  with  Ariel  and 
Caliban  as  special  ministers  1  Of  whom  else  could  he 
have  been  thinking,  when  he  says,  — 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE.  201 

"  Graves,  at  my  command, 

Have  waked  their  sleepers,  oped,  and  let  them  forth, 
By  my  so  potent  art  "  ? 

Was  this  man,  so  extraordinary  from  whatever  side 
we  look  at  him,  who  ran  so  easily  through  the  whole 
scale  of  human  sentiment,  from  the  homely  common- 
sense  of,  "  When  two  men  ride  of  one  horse,  one  must 
ride  behind,"  to  the  transcendental  subtilty  of, 

"  No,  Time,  thou  shalt  not  boast  that  I  do  change ; 
Thy  pyramids,  built  up  with  newer  might, 
To  me  are  nothing  novel,  nothing  strange ; 
They  are  but  dressings  of  a  former  sight,"  — 

was  he  alone  so  unconscious  of  powers,  some  part  of 
whose  magic  is  recognized  by  all  mankind,  from  the 
school-boy  to  the  philosopher,  that  he  merely  sat  by  and 
saw  them  go  without  the  least  notion  what  they  were 
about  1  Was  he  an  inspired  idiot,  votre  bizarre  Shake 
speare  ?  a  vast,  irregular  genius  1  a  simple  rustic,  war 
bling  his  native  wood-notes  wild,  in  other  words,  insensi 
ble  to  the  benefits  of  culture  1  When  attempts  have 
been  made  at  various  times  to  prove  that  this  singular 
and  seemingly  contradictory  creature,  not  one,  but  all 
mankind's  epitome,  was  a  musician,  a  lawyer,  a  doctor, 
a  Catholic,  a  Protestant,  an  atheist,  an  Irishman,  a  dis 
coverer  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  and  finally,  that 
he  was  not  himself,  but  somebody  else,  is  it  not  a  little 
odd  that  the  last  thing  anybody  should  have  thought  of 
proving  him  was  an  artist  1  Nobody  believes  any  longer 
that  immediate  inspiration  is  possible  in  modern  times 
(as  if  God  had  grown  old),  —  at  least,  nobody  believes  it 
of  the  prophets  of  those  days,  of  John  of  Leyden,  or 
Reeves,  or  Muggleton,  —  and  yet  everybody  seems  to 
take  it  for  granted  of  this  one  man  Shakespeare.  He, 
somehow  or  other,  without  knowing  it,  was  able  to  do 
what  none  of  the  rest  of  them,  though  knowing  it  all 
too  perfectly  well,  could  begin  to  do.  Everybody  seems 
9* 


202  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

to  get  afraid  of  him  in  turn.  Voltaire  plays  gentleman 
usher  for  him  to  his  countrymen,  and  then,  perceiving 
that  his  countrymen  find  a  flavor  in  him  beyond  that  of 
Zaire  or  Mahomet,  discovers  him  to  be  a  Sauvage  ivre, 
sans  le  moindre  etincelle  de  bon  gotit,  et  sans  le  moindre 
connoissance  des  regies.  Goethe,  who  tells  us  that  Gotz 
von  Eerlicldngen  was  written  in  the  Shakespearian  man 
ner,  —  and  we  certainly  should  not  have  guessed  it,  if 
he  had  not  blabbed,  —  comes  to  the  final  conclusion, 
that  Shakespeare  was  a  poet,  but  not  a  dramatist. 
Chateaubriand  thinks  that  he  has  corrupted  art.  "  If, 
to  attain,"  he  says,  "  the  height  of  tragic  art,  it  be 
enough  to  heap  together  disparate  scenes  without  order 
and  without  connection,  to  dovetail  the  burlesque  with 
the  pathetic,  to  set  the  water-carrier  beside  the  monarch 
and  the  huckster-wench  beside  the  queen,  who  may  not 
reasonably  flatter  himself  with  being  the  rival  of  the 
greatest  masters  1  Whoever  should  give  himself  the 
trouble  to  retrace  a  single  one  of  his  days,  ....  to 
keep  a  journal  from  hour  to  hour,  would  have  made  a 
drama  in  the  fashion  of  the  English  poet."  But  there 
journals  arid  journals,  as  the  French  say,  and  what  goes 
into  them  depends  on  the  eye  that  gathers  for  them. 
It  is  a  long  step  from  St.  Simon  to  Dangcau,  from 
Pepys  to  Thoresby,  from  Shakespeare  even  to  the  Mar 
quis  de  Chateaubriand.  M.  Hugo  alone,  convinced  that, 
as  founder  of  the  French  Eomantic  School,  there  is  a 
kind  of  family  likeness  between  himself  and  Shake 
speare,  stands  boldly  forth  to  prove  the  father  as  extrav 
agant  as  the  son.  Calm  yourself,  M.  Hugo,  you  are 
no  more  a  child  of  his  than  Will  Davenant  was  !  But, 
after  all,  is  it  such  a  great  crime  to  produce  something 
absolutely  new  in  a  world  so  tedious  as  ours,  and  so  apt 
to  tell  its  old  stories  over  again  ?  I  do  not  mean  new 
in  substance,  but  in  the  manner  of  presentation.  Surely 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE.  203 

the  highest  office  of  a  great  poet  is  to  show  us  how 
much  variety,  freshness,  and  opportunity  abides  in  the 
obvious  and  familiar.  He  invents  nothing,  but  seems 
rather  to  re-discover  the  world  about  him,  and  his  pene 
trating  vision  gives  to  things  of  daily  encounter  some 
thing  of  the  strangeness  of  new  creation.  Meanwhile 
the  changed  conditions  of  modern  life  demand  a  change 
in  the  method  of  treatment.  The  ideal  is  not  a  strait- 
waistcoat.  Because  Alexis  and  Dora  is  so  charming, 
shall  we  have  no  Paul  and  Virginia  ?  It  was  the  idle 
endeavor  to  reproduce  the  old  enchantment  in  the  old 
way  that  gave  us  the  pastoral,  sent  to  the  garret  now 
with  our  grandmothers'  achievements  of  the  same  sort  in 
worsted.  Every  age  says  to  its  poets,  like  a  mistress  to 
her  lover,  "  Tell  me  what  I  am  like  "  ;  and  he  who  suc 
ceeds  in  catching  the  evanescent  expression  that  reveals 
character  —  which  is  as  much  as  to  say,  what  is  intrin 
sically  human  —  will  be  found  to  have  caught  something 
as  imperishable  as  human  nature  itself.  Aristophanes, 
by  the  vital  and  essential  qualities  of  his  humorous 
satire,  is  already  more  nearly  our  contemporary  than 
Moliere  ;  and  even  the  Trouveres,  careless  and  trivial  as 
they  mostly  are,  could  fecundate  a  great  poet  like 
Chaucer,  and  are  still  delightful  reading. 

The  Attic  tragedy  still  keeps  its  hold  upon  the  loy 
alty  of  scholars  through  their  imagination,  or  their  ped 
antry,  or  their  feeling  of  an  exclusive  property,  as  may 
happen,  and,  however  alloyed  with  baser  matter,  this 
loyalty  is  legitimate  and  well  bestowed.  But  the  do 
minion  of  the  Shakespearian  is  even  wider.  It  pushed 
forward  its  boundaries  from  year  to  year,  and  moves  no 
landmark  backward.  Here  Alfieri  and  Lessing  own  a 
common  allegiance  :  and  the  loyalty  to  him  is  one  not 
of  guild  or  tradition,  but  of  conviction  and  enthusiasm. 
Can  this  be  said  of  any  other  modern  ?  of  robust  Cor- 


204  SHAKESPEARE  .ONCE  MORE. 

neillc  ?  of  tender  Racine  1  of  Calderon  even,  with  his 
tropical  warmth  and  vigor  of  production  1  The  Greeks 
and  he  are  alike  and  alone  in  this,  and  for  the  same  rea 
son,  that  both  are  unapproachably  the  highest  in  their 
kind.  Call  him  Gothic,  if  you  like,  but  the  inspiring 
mind  that  presided  over  the  growth  of  these  clustered 
masses  of  arch  and  spire  and  pinnacle  and  buttress  is 
neither  Greek  nor  Gothic,  —  it  is  simply  genius  lending 
itself  to  embody  the  new  desire  of  man's  mind,  as  it 
had  embodied  the  old.  After  all,  to  be  delightful  is  to 
be  classic,  and  the  chaotic  never  pleases  long.  But 
manifoldness  is  not  confusion,  any  more  than  formalism 
is  simplicity.  If  Shakespeare  rejected  the  unities,  as  I 
think  he  who  complains  of  "  Art  made  tongue-tied  by 
Authority  "  might  very  well  deliberately  do,  it  was  for 
the  sake  of  an  imaginative  unity  more  intimate  than 
any  of  time  and  place.  The  antique  in  itself  is  not  the 
ideal,  though  its  remoteness  from  the  vulgarity  of  every 
day  associations  helps  to  make  it  seem  so.  The  true 
ideal  is  not  opposed  to  the  real,  nor  is  it  any  artificial 
heightening  thereof,  but  lies  in  it,  and  blessed  are  the 
eyes  that  find  it !  It  is  the  mens  divinior  which  hides 
within  the  actual,  transfiguring  matter-of-fact  into  mat- 
ter-of-meaning  for  him  who  has  the  gift  of  second-sight. 
In  this  sense  Hogarth  is  often  more  truly  ideal  than 
Raphael,  Shakespeare  often  more  truly  so  than  the 
Greeks.  I  think  it  is  a  more  or  less  conscious  percep 
tion  of  this  ideality,  as  it  is  a  more  or  less  well-grounded 
persuasion  of  it  as  respects  the  Greeks,  that  assures  to 
him,  as  to  them,  and  with  equal  justice,  a  permanent 
supremacy  over  the  minds  of  men.  This  gives  to  his 
characters  their  universality,  to  his  thought  its  irradiat 
ing  property,  while  the  artistic  purpose  running  through 
and  combining  the  endless  variety  of  scene  and  charac 
ter  will  alone  account  for  his  power  of  dramatic  effect. 


SHAKESPEAEE   ONCE   MORE.  205 

Goethe  affirmed,  that,  without  Schroder's  primings  and 
adaptations,  Shakespeare  was  too  undramatic  for  the 
German  theatre,  —  that,  if  the  theory  that  his  plays 
should  be  represented  textually  should  prevail,  he  would 
be  driven  from  the  boards.  The  theory  has  prevailed, 
and  he  not  only  holds  his  own,  but  is  acted  oftener  than 
ever.  It  is  not  irregular  genius  that  can  do  this,  for 
surely  Germany  need  not  go  abroad  for  what  her  own 
Werners  could  more  than  amply  supply  her  with. 

But  I  would  much  rather  quote  a  fine  saying  than  a 
bad  prophecy  of  a  man  to  whom  I  owe  so  much.  Goethe, 
in  one  of  the  most  perfect  of  his  shorter  poems,  tells  us 
that  a  poem  is  like  a  painted  window.  Seen  from  with 
out,  (and  he  accordingly  justifies  the  Philistine,  who 
never  looks  at  them  otherwise,)  they  seem  dingy  and  con 
fused  enough ;  but  enter,  and  then 

"  Da  ist's  auf  einmal  farbig  helle, 
Geschicht'  und  Zierath  glanzt  in  Schnelle." 

With  the  same  feeling  he  says  elsewhere  in  prose,  that 
"  there  is  a  destructive  criticism  and  a  productive.  The 
former  is  very  easy ;  for  one  has  only  to  set  up  in  his  mind 
any  standard,  any  model,  however  narrow"  (let  us  say 
the  Greeks),  "and  then  boldly  assert  that  the  work 
under  review  does  not  match  with  it,  and  therefore  is 
good  for  nothing,  —  the  matter  is  settled,  and  one  must 
at  once  deny  its  claim.  Productive  criticism  is  a  great 
deal  more  difficult ;  it  asks,  What  did  the  author  propose  / 
to  himself?  Is  what  he  proposes  reasonable  and  com 
prehensible  1  and  how  far  has  he  succeeded  in  carrying  it 
out  1 "  It  is  in  applying  this  latter  kind  of  criticism  to 
Shakespeare  that  the  Germans  have  set  us  an  example 
worthy  of  all  commendation.  If  they  have  been  some 
times  over-subtile,  they  at  least  had  the  merit  of  first 
looking  at  his  works  as  wholes,  as  something  that  very 
likely  contained  an  idea,  perhaps  conveyed  a  moral,  if  we 


206  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE. 

could  get  at  it.  The  illumination  lent  us  by  most  of  the 
English  commentators  reminds  us  of  the  candles  which 
guides  hold  up  to  show  us  a  picture  in  a  dark  place,  the 
smoke  of  which  gradually  makes  the  work  of  the  artist 
invisible  under  its  repeated  layers.  Lessing,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  opened  the  first  glimpse  in  the  new 
direction  j  Goethe  followed  with  his  famous  exposition  of 
Hamlet ;  A.  W.  Schlegel  took  a  more  comprehensive 
view  in  his  Lectures,  which  Coleridge  worked  over  into 
English,  adding  many  fine  criticisms  of  his  own  on  single 
passages  ;  and  finally,  Gervinus  has  devoted  four  volumes 
to  a  comment  on  the  plays,  full  of  excellent  matter, 
though  pushing  the  moral  exegesis  beyond  all  reasonable 
bounds.*  With  the  help  of  all  these,  and  especially  of 
the  last,  I  shall  apply  this  theory  of  criticism  to  Hamlet, 
not  in  the  hope  of  saying  anything  new,  but  of  bringing 
something  to  the  support  of  the  thesis,  that,  if  Shake 
speare  was  skilful  as  a  playwright,  he  was  even  greater  as 
a  dramatist,  —  that,  if  his  immediate  business  was  to  fill 
the  theatre,  his  higher  object  was  to  create  something 
which,  by  fulfilling  the  conditions  and  answering  the  re 
quirements  of  modern  life,  should  as  truly  deserve  to  be 
called  a  work  of  art  as  others  had  deserved  it  by  doing 
the  same  thing  in  former  times  and  under  other  circum 
stances.  Supposing  him  to  have  accepted  —  consciously 
or  not  is  of  little  importance  —  the  new  terms  of  the 
problem  which  makes  character  the  pivot  of  dramatic 
action,  and  consequently  the  key  of  dramatic  unity,  how 
far  did  he  succeed  1 

^Before  attempting  my  analysis,  I  must  clear  away  a 
little  rubbish.  Are  such  anachronisms  as  those  of  which 
Voltaire  accuses  Shakespeare  in  Hamlet,  such  as  the  in 
troduction  of  cannon  before  the  invention  of  gunpowder, 

*  I  do  not  mention  UMci's  book,  for  it  seems  to  me  unwieldy  and 
dull,  — zeal  without  knowledge. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE.  207 

and  making  Christians  of  the  Danes  three  centuries  too 
soon,  of  the  least  bearing  aesthetically  ^  I  think  not ;  but 
as  they  are  of  a  piece  with  a  great  many  other  criti 
cisms  upon  the  great  poet,  it  is  worth  while  to  dwell 
upon  them  a  moment. 

The  first  demand  we  make  upon  whatever  claims  to  be 
a  work  of  art  (and  we  have  a  right  to  make  it)  is 
that  it  shall  be  in  keeping.  Now  this  propriety  is  of  two 
kinds,  either  ejxtrinsic  or  intrinsic.  In  the  first  I  should 
class  whatever  relates  rather  to  the  body  than  the  soul 
of  the  work,  such  as  fidelity  to  the  facts  of  history, 
(wherever  that  is  important.)  congruity  of  costume,  and 
the  like,  —  in  short,  whatever  might  come  under  the 
head  of  picturesque  truth,  a  departure  from  which  would 
shock  too  rudely  our  preconceived  associations.  I  have 
seen  an  Indian  chief  in  French  boots,  and  he  seemed  to 
me  almost  tragic ;  but,  put  upon  the  stage  in  tragedy,  he 
would  have  been  ludicrous.  Lichtenberg,  writing  from 
London  in  1775,  tells  us  that  Garrick  played  Hamlet  in 
a  suit  of  the  French  fashion,  then  commonly  worn,  and 
that  he  was  blamed  for  it  by  some  of  the  critics  ;  but,  he 
says,  one  hears  no  such  criticism  during  the  play,  nor  on 
the  way  home,  nor  at  supper  afterwards,  nor  indeed  till 
the  emotion  roused  by  the  great  actor  has  had  time  to 
subside.  He  justifies  Garrick,  though  we  should  not  be 
able  to  endure  it  now.  Yet  nothing  would  be  gained  by 
trying  to  make  Hamlet's  costume  true  to  the  assumed 
period  of  the  play,  for  the  scene  of  it  is  laid  in  a  Den 
mark  that  has  no  dates. 

In  the  second  and  more  important  category,  I  should 
put,  first,  co-ordination  of  character,  that  is,  a  certain 
variety  in  harmony  of  the  personages  of  a  drama,  as  in 
the  attitudes  and  coloring  of  the  figures  in  a  pictorial 
composition,  so  that,  while  mutually  relieving  and  set 
ting  off  each  other,  they  shall  combine  in  the  total  inv 


208 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 


pression ;  second,  that  subordinate  truth  to  Nature  which 
makes  each  character  coherent  in  itself ;  and,  third,  such 
propriety  of  costume  and  the  like  as  shall  satisfy  the  su- 
perhistoric  sense,  to  which,  and  to  which  alone,  the 
higher  drama  appeals.  All  these  come  within  the  scope 
of  imaginative  truth.  To  illustrate  my  third  head  by 
an  example.  Tieck  criticises  John  Kemble's  dressing  for 
Macbeth  in  a  modern  Highland  costume,  as  being  un 
graceful  without  any  countervailing  merit  of  historical 
exactness.  I  think  a  deeper  reason  for  his  dissatis 
faction  might  be  found  in  the  fact,  that  this  garb,  with 
its  purely  modern  and  British  army  associations,  is  out 
of  place  on  Fores  Heath,  and  drags  the  Weird  Sis 
ters  down  with  it  from  their  proper  imaginative  remote 
ness  in  the  gloom  of  the  past  to  the  disenchanting  glare 
of  the  foot-lights.  It  is  not  the  antiquarian,  but  the 
poetic  conscience,  that  is  wounded.  To  this,  exactness, 
so  far  as  concems  ideal  representation,  may  not  only  not 
be  truth,  but  may  even  be  opposed  to  it.  Anachronisms 
and  the  like  are  in  themselves  of  no  account,  and  become 
important  only  when  they  make  a  gap  too  wide  for  our 
illusion  to  cross  unconsciously,  that  is,  when  they  are. 
anacoluthons  to  the  imagination.  The  aim  of  the  artist 
is  psychologic,  not  historic  truth.  It  is  comparatively 
easy  for  an  author  to  get  up  any  period  with  tolerable 
minuteness  in  externals,  but  readers  and  audiences  find 
more  difficulty  in  getting  them  down,  though  oblivion 
swallows  scores  of  them  at  a  gulp.  The  saving  truth  in 
such  matters  is  a  truth  to  essential  and  permanent 
characteristics.  The  Ulysses  of  Shakespeare,  like  the 
Ulysses  of  Dante  and  Tennyson,  more  or  less  harmonizes 
with  our  ideal  conception  of  the  wary,  long-considering, 
though  adventurous  son  of  Laertes,  yet  Simon  Lord  Lovat 
is  doubtless  nearer  the  original  type.  In  Hamlet,  though 
there  is  no  Denmark  of  the  ninth  century,  Shakespeare 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  209 

has  suggested  the  prevailing  rudeness  of  manners  quite 
enough  for  his  purpose.  We  see  it  in  the  single  combat 
of  Hamlet's  father  with  the  elder  Fortinbras,  in  the  vul 
gar  wassail  of  the  king,  in  the  English  monarch  being 
expected  to  hang  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern  out  of 
hand  merely  to  oblige  his  cousin  of  Denmark,  in  Laertes, 
sent  to  Paris  to  be  made  a  gentleman  of,  becoming  in 
stantly  capable  of  any  the  most  barbarous  treachery  to 
glut  his  vengeance.  We  cannot  fancy  Ragnar  Lodbrog 
or  Eric  the  Red  matriculating  at  Wittenberg,  but  it  was 
essential  that  Hamlet  should  be  a  scholar,  and  Shake 
speare  sends  him  thither  without  more  ado.  All  through 
the  play  we  get  the  notion  of  a  state  of  society  in  which 
a  savage  nature  has  disguised  itself  in  the  externals  of 
civilization,  like  a  Maori  deacon,  who  has  only  to  strip 
and  he  becomes  once  more  a  tattooed  pagan  with  his 
mouth  watering  for  a  spare-rib  of  his  pastor.  Histori 
cally,  at  the  date  of  Hamlet,  the  Danes  were  in  the 
habit  of  burning  their  enemies  alive  in  their  houses, 
with  as  much  of  their  family  about  them  as  might  be 
to  make  it  comfortable.  Shakespeare  seems  purposely 
to  have  dissociated  his  play  from  history  by  changing 
nearly  every  name  in  the  original  legend.  The  motive 
of__thc.  play .—  revenge  a»--a-  -  religious .  duty  —  belongs 
only  to  a  social  state  in  which  the  traditions  of  barba 
rism  are  still  operative,  but,  with  infallible  artistic  judg 
ment,  Shakespeare  has  chosen,  not  untamed  Nature,  as 
he  found  it  in  history,  but  the  period  of  transition,  a 
period  in  which  the  times  are  always  out  "of  joint,  and 
thus  the  irresolution  which  has  its  root  in  Hamlet's  own 
character  is  stimulated  by  the  very  incompatibility  of 
that  legacy  of  vengeance  he  has  inherited  from  the  past 
with  the  new  culture  and  refinement  of  which  he  is  the 
representative.  One  of  the  few  books  which  Shake 
speare  is  known  to  have  possessed  was  Florio's  Montaigne, 


210  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

and  he  might  well  have  transferred  the  Frenchman's 
motto,  Que  sqais  je  ?  to  the  front  of  his  tragedy  ;  nor 
can  I  help  fancying  something  more  than  accident  in  the 
fact  that  Hamlet  has  been  a  student  at  Wittenberg, 
whence  those  new  ideas  went  forth,  of  whose  results  in 
unsettling  men's  faith,  and  consequently  disqualifying 
them  for  promptness  in  action,  Shakespeare  had  been 
not  only  an  eye-witness,  but  which  he  must  actually 
have  experienced  in  himself. 

One  other  objection  let  me  touch  upon  here,  especially 
as  it  has  been  urged  against  Hamlet,  and  that  is  the  in 
troduction  of  low  characters  and  comic  scenes  in  tragedy. 
Even  Garrick,  who  had  just  assisted  at  the  Stratford 
Jubilee,  where  Shakespeare  had  been  pronounced  divine, 
was  induced  by  this  absurd  outcry  for  the  proprieties  of 
the  tragic  stage  to  omit  the  grave-diggers'  scene  from 
Hamlet.  Leaving  apart  the  fact  that  Shakespeare  would 
not  have  been  the  representative  poet  he  is,  if  he  had 
not  given  expression  to  this  striking  tendency  of  the 
Northern  races,  which  shows  itself  constantly,  not  only 
in  their  literature,  but  even  in  their  mythology  and  their 
architecture,  the  grave-diggers'  scene  always  impresses 
me  as  one  of  the  most  pathetic  in  the  whole  tragedy. 
That  Shakespeare  introduced  such  scenes  anM  characters 
with  deliberate  intention,  and  with  a  view  to  artistic  re 
lief  and  contrast,  there  can  hardly  be  a  doubt.  We 
must  take  it  for  granted  that  a  man  whose  works  show 
everywhere  the  results  of  judgment  sometimes  acted 
with  forethought.  I  find  the  springs  of  the  profoundest 
sorrow  and  pity  in  this  hardened  indifference  of  the 
grave-diggers,  in  their  careless  discussion  as  to  whether 
Ophelia's  death  was  by  suicide  or  no,  in  their  singing 
and  jesting  at  their  dreary  work. 

"  A  pickaxe  and  a  spade,  a  spade, 
For —  and  a  shrouding-sheet: 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  211 

0,  a  pit  of  clay  for  to  be  made 
For  such  a  guest  is  meet !  " 

We  know  who  is  to  be  the  guest  of  this  earthen  hospi 
tality,  —  how  much  beauty,  love,  and  heartbreak  are  to 
be  covered  in  that  pit  of  clay.  All  we  remember  of 
Ophelia  reacts  upon  us  with  tenfold  force,  and  we  recoil 
from  our  amusement  at  the  ghastly  drollery  of  the  two 
delvers  with  a  shock  of  horror.  That  the  unconscious 
Hamlet  should  stumble  on  this  grave  of  all  others,  that 
it  should  be  here  that  he  should  pause  to  muse  humor 
ously  on  death  and  decay,  —  all  this  prepares  us  for  the 
revulsion  of  passion  in  the  next  scene,  and  for  the  frantic 
confession,  — 

"  I  loved  Ophelia ;  forty  thousand  brothers 
Could  not  with  all  their  quantity  of  love 
Make  up  my  sum !  " 

And  it  is  only  here  that  such  an  asseveration  would  be 
true  even  to  the  feeling  of  the  moment ;  for  it  is  plain 
from  all  we  know  of  Hamlet  that  he  could  not  so  have 
loved  Ophelia,  that  he  was  incapable  of  the  self-aban 
donment  of  a  true  passion,  that  he  would  have  analyzed 
this  emotion  as  he  does  all  others,  would  have  peeped 
and  botanized  upon  it  till  it  became  to  him  a  mere  mat 
ter  of  scientific  interest.  All  this  force  of  contrast,  and 
this  horror  of  surprise,  were  necessary  so  to  intensify  his 
remorseful  regret  that  he  should  believe  himself  for  once  in 
earnest.  The  speech  of  the  King,  "0,  he  is  mad,  Laertes," 
recalls  him  to  himself,  and  he  at  once  begins  to  rave  :  — 

"  Zounds !  show  me  what  thou  'It  do ! 

Woul't  weep?  woul't  fight?  woul't  fast?  woul't  tear  thyself  ? 
Woul't  drink  up  eysil?  eat  a  crocodile?  " 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  whole  Jglot  hinges  upon  the 
character_of  Hamlet,  that  Shakespeare's  conception  of 
this  was  the  ovum  out  of  which  the  whole  organism  was 
hatched.  And  here  let  me  remark,  that  there  is  a  kind 


212  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

of  genealogical  necessity  in  the  character, — a  thing  not 
altogether  strange  to  the  attentive  reader  of  Shakespeare. 
Hamlet  seems  the  natural  result  of  the  mixture  of  father 
and  mother  in  his  temperament,  the  resolutioh  and  per 
sistence  of  the  one,  like  sound  timber  wormholed  arid 
made  shaky,  as  it  were,  by  the  other's  infirmity  of  will 
and  discontinuity  of  purpose.  In  natures  so  imperfectly 
mixed  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  vehemence  of  inten 
tion  the  prelude  and  counterpoise  of  weak  performance, 
the  conscious  nature  striving  to  keep  up  its  self-respect 
by  a  triumph  in  words  all  the  more  resolute  that  it  feels 
assured  beforehand  of  inevitable  defeat  in  action.  As  in 
such  slipshod  housekeeping  men  are  their  own  largest 
creditors,  they  find  it  easy  to  stave  off  utter  bankruptcy 
of  conscience  by  taking  up  one  unpaid  promise  with 
another  larger,  and  at  heavier  interest,  till  such  self- 
swindling  becomes  habitual  and  by  degrees  almost  pain 
less.  How  did  Coleridge  discount  his  own  notes  of  this 
kind  with  less  and  less  specie  as  the  figures  lengthened 
on  the  paper  !  As  with  Hamlet,  so  it  is  with  Ophelia 
and  Laertes.  The  father's  feebleness  comes  up  again 
in  the  wasting  heartbreak  and  gentle  lunacy  of  the 
daughter,  while  the  son  shows  it  in  a  rashness  of  im 
pulse  and  act,  a  kind  of  crankiness,  of  whose  essential 
feebleness  we  are  all  the  more  sensible  as  contrasted 
with  a  nature  so  steady  on  its  keel,  and  drawing  so  much 
water,  as  that  of  Horatio,  —  the  foil  at  once,  in  different 
ways,  to  both  him  and  Hamlet.  It  was  natural,  also, 
that  the  daughter  of  self-conceited  old  Polonius  should 
have  her  softness  stiffened  with  a  fibre  of  obstinacy ;  for 
there  are  two  kinds  of  weakness,  that  which  breaks,  and 
that  which  bends.  Ophelia's  is  of  the  former  kind ; 
Hero  is  her  counterpart,  giving  way  before  calamity,  and 
rising  again  so  soon  as  the  pressure  is  removed. 

I  find  two  passages  in  Dante  that  contain  the  exact-. 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE.  213 

est  possible  definition  of  that  habit  or  quality  of  Hamlet's 
mind  which  justifies  the  tragic  turn  of  the  play,  and 
renders  it  natural  and  unavoidable  from  the  beginning. 
The  first  is  from  the  second  canto  of  the  Inferno :  — 

"  E  quale  e  quei  die  disvuol  cio  che  voile, 
E  per  nuovi  pensier  eangia  proposta, 
Si  che  del  cominciar  tutto  si  tolle; 
Tal  mi  fee'  io  in  quella  oscura  costa : 
Perche  pensando  consumai  la  impresa 
Che  fu  nel  cominciar  cotanto  tosta." 

"  And  like  the  man  who  unwills  what  he  willed, 
And  for  new  thoughts  cloth  change  his  first  intent, 
So  that  he  cannot  anywhere  begin, 
Such  became  I  upon  that  slope  obscure, 
Because  with  thinking  I  consumed  resolve, 
That  was  so  ready  at  the  setting  out." 

Again,  in  the  fifth  of  the  Purgatorio  :  — 

"  Che  sempre  1'  uomo  in  cui  pensier  rampoglia 
Sovra  pensier,  da  se  dilunga  il  segno, 
Perche  la  foga  1'  un  dell'  altro  insolla." 

"  For  always  he  in  whom  one  thought  buds  forth 
Out  of  another  farther  puts  the  goal. 
For  each  has  only  force  to  mar  the  other." 

Dante  was  a  profound  metaphysician,  and  as  in  the 
first  passage  he  describes  and  defines  a  certain  quality  of 
mind,  so  in  the  other  he  tells  us  its  result  in  the  charac 
ter  and  life,  namely,  indecision  and  failure,  —  the  goal 
farther  off  at  the  end  than  at  t£e  beginning.  It  is  re 
markable  how  close  a  resemblance  of  thought,  and  even 
of  expression,  there  is  between  the  former  of  these  quota 
tions  and  a  part  of  Hamlet's  famous  soliloquy :  — 

"  Thus  conscience  [i.  e.  consciousness]  doth  make  cowards  of  us  all : 
And  thus  the  native  hue  of  resolution 
Is  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought, 
And  enterprises  of  great  pitch  and  moment 
With  this  regard  their  currents  turn  awry, 
And  lose  the  name  of  action!  " 

It  is  an  inherent  peculiarity  of  a  mind  like  Hamlet's 
that  it  should  be  conscious  of  its  own  defect.  Men  of 


214  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

his  type  are  r  jbrever  analyzing  their  own  emotions  and 
motives.  They  cannot  do  anything,  because  they  always 
see  two  ways  of  doing  it.  They  cannot  determine  on 
any  course  of  action,  because  they  are  always,  as  it  were, 
standing  at  the  cross-roads,  and  see  too  well  the  disadvan 
tages  of  every  one  of  them.  It  is  not  that  they  are 
incapable  of  resolve,  but  somehow  the  band  between  the 
motive  power  and  the  operative  faculties  is  relaxed  and 
loose.  The  engine  works,  but  the  machinery  it  should 
drive  stands  still.  The  imagination  is  so  much  in  over 
plus,  that  thinking  a  thing  becomes  better  than  doing  it, 
and  thought  with  its  easy  perfection,  capable  of  every 
thing  because  it  can  accomplish  everything  with  ideal 
means,  is  vastly  more  attractive  and  satisfactory  than 
deed,  which  must  be  wrought  at  best  with  imperfect 
instruments,  and  always  falls  short  of  the  conception 
that  went  before  it.  "If  to  do,"  says  Portia  in  the 
Merchant  of  Venice,  —  "if  to  do  were  as  easy  as  to  know 
what  't  were  good  to  do,  chapels  had  been  churches,  and 
poor  men's  cottages  princes'  palaces."  Hamlet  knows 
only  too  well  what  't  were  good  to  do,  BuTlie  palters 
with  everything  in  a  double  sense  :  he  sees  the  grain  of 
good  there  is  in  evil,  and  the  grain  of  evil  there  is  in 
good,  as  they  exist  in  the  world,  and,  finding  that  he  can 
make  those  feather-weighted  accidents  balance  each  other, 
infers  that  there  is  little  to  choose  between  the  essences 
themselves.  He  is  of  Montaigne's  mind,  and  says  express 
ly  that  "  there  is  nothing  good  or  ill,  but  thinking  makes 
it  so."  He  dwells  so  exclusively  in  the  world  of  ideas 
that  the  world  of  facts  seems  trifling,  nothing  is  worth 
the  while ;  and  he  has  been  so  long  objectless  and  pur 
poseless,  so  far  as  actual  life  is  concerned,  that,  when 
at  last  an  object  and  an  aim  are  forced  upon  him, 
he  cannot  deal  with  them,  and  gropes  about  vainly  for 
a  motive  outside  of  himself  that  shall  marshal  his 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  215 

thoughts  for  him  and  guide  his  faculties  into  the  path 
of  action.  He  is  the  victim  not  so  much  of  feebleness 
of  will  as  of  an  intellectual  indifference  that  hinders  the 
will  from  working  long  in  any  one  direction.  He  wishes 
to  will,  but  never  wills.  His  continual  iteration  of  re 
solve  shows  that  he  has  no  resolution.  He  is  capable 
of  passionate  energy  where  the  occasion  presents  itself 
suddenly  from  without,  because  nothing  is  so  irritable  as 
conscious  irresolution  with  a  duty  to  perform.  But  of 
deliberate  energy  he  is  not  capable ;  for  there  the  im 
pulse  must  come  from  within,  and  the  blade  of  his 
analysis  is  so  subtile  that  it  can  divide  the  finest  hair 
of  motive  'twixt  north  and  northwest  side,  leaving  him 
desperate  to  choose  between  them.  The  very  conscious 
ness  of  his  defect  is  an  insuperable  bar  to  his  repairing 
it ;  for  the  unity  of  purpose,  which  infuses  every  fibre 
of  the  character  with  will  available  whenever  wanted, 
is  impossible  where  the  mind  can  never  rest  till  it  has 
resolved  that  unity  into  its  component  elements,  and 
satisfied  itself  which  on  the  whole  is  of  greater  value. 
A  critical  instinct  so  insatiable  that  it  must  turn  upon 
itself,  for  lack  of  something  else  to  hew  and  hack,  be 
comes  incapable  at  last  of  originating  anything  except 
indecision.  It  becomes  infallible  in  what  not  to  do. 
How  easily  he  might  have  accomplished  his  task  is 
shown  by  the  conduct  of  Laertes.  When  he  has  a  death 
to  avenge,  he  raises  a  mob,  breaks  into  the  palace,  bul 
lies  the  king,  and  proves  how  weak  the  usurper  really  was. 
The  world  is  the  victim  of  splendid  parts,  and  is  slow 
to  accept  a  rounded  whole,  because  that  is  something 
which  is  long  in  completing,  still  longer  in  demonstrating 
its  completion.  We  like  to  be  surprised  into  admira 
tion,  and  not  logically  convinced  that  we  ought  to  admire. 
We  arc  willing  to  be  delighted  with  success,  though  we 
are  somewhat  indifferent  to  the  homely  qualities  which 


216  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

s  insure  it.  Our  thought  is  so  filled  with  the  rocket's  burst 
of  momentary  splendor  so  far  above  us,  that  we  forget 
the  poor  stick,  useful  and  unseen,  that  made  its  climb 
ing  possible.  One  of  these  homely  qualities  is  continu 
ity  of  character,  and  it  escapes  present  applause  because 
it  tells  chiefly,  in  the  long  run,  in  results.  With  his 
usual  tact,  Shakespeare  has  brought  in  such  a  character 
as  a  contrast  and  foil  to  Hamlet.  Horatio  is  the  only 
complete  man  in  the  play,  —  solid,  well-knit,  and  true ; 
a  noble,  quiet  nature,  with  that  highest  of  all  qualities, 
judgment,  always  sane  and  prompt  f  who  never  drags 
his  anchors  for  any  wind  of  opinion  or  fortune,  but  grips 
all  the  closer  to'  the  reality  of  things.  He  seems  one  of 
those  calm,  undemonstrative  men  whom  we  love  and 
admire  without  asking  to  know  why,  crediting  them 
with  the  capacity  of  great  things,  without  any  test  of 
actual  achievement,  because  we  feel  that  their  manhood 
is  a  constant  quality,  and  no  mere  accident  of  circum 
stance  and  opportunity.  Such  men  are  always  sure  of 
the  presence  of  their  highest  self  on  demand.  -Hamlet 
is  continually  drawing  bills  on  the  future,  secured  by 
his  promise  of  himself  to  himself,  which  he  can  never 
redeem.  His  own  somewhat  feminine  nature  recognizes 
its  complement  in  Horatio,  and  clings  to  it  instinctively, 
as  naturally  as  Horatio  is  attracted  by  that  fatal  gift  of 
imagination,  the  absence  of  which  makes  the  strength 
of  his  own  character,  as  its  overplus  does  the  weakness 
of  Hamlet's.  It  is  a  happy  marriage  of  two  minds 
drawn  together  by  the  charm  of  unlikeness.  Hamlet  feels 
in  Horatio  the  solid  steadiness  wThich  he  misses  in  him 
self  ;  Horatio  in  Hamlet  that  need  of  service  and  sustain- 
ment  to  render  which  gives  him  a  consciousness  of  his  own 
value.  Hamlet  fills  the  place  of  a  woman  to  Horatio, 
revealing  him  to  himself  not  only  in  what  he  says,  but 
by  a  constant  claim  upon  his  strength  of  nature ;  and 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  217 

there  is  great  psychological  truth  in  making  suicide  the 
first  impulse  of  this  quiet,  undemonstrative  man,  after 
Hamlet's  death,  as  if  the  very  reason  for  his  being  were 
taken  away  with  his  friend's  need  of  him.  In  his  grief, 
he  for  the  first  and  only  time  speaks  of  himself,  is  first 
made  conscious  of  himself  by  his  loss.  If  this  manly 
reserve  of  Horatio  be  true  to  Nature,  not  less  so  are  the 
communicativeness  of  Hamlet,  and  his  tendency  to  so 
liloquize.  ^If  self-consciousness  be  alien  to  the  one,  it  is 
just  as  truly  the  happiness  of  the  other.  Like  a  musi 
cian  distrustful  of  himself,  he  is  forever  tuning  his  in 
strument,  first  overstraining  this  cord  a  little,  and  then 
that,  but  unable  to  bring  them  into  unison,  or  to  profit 
by  it  if  he  could. 

We  do  not  believe  that  Horatio  ever  thought  he  "  was 
not  a  pipe  for  Fortune's  finger  to  play  what  stop  she 
please,"  till  Hamlet  told  him  so.  That  was  Fortune's 
affair,  not  his ;  let  her  try  it,  if  she  liked.  He  is  un 
conscious  of  his  own  peculiar  qualities,  as  men  of  decis 
ion  commonly  are,  or  they  would  not  be  men  of  decision. 
When  there  is  a  thing  to  be  done,  they  go  straight  at  it, 
and  for  the  time  there  is  nothing  for  them  in  the  whole 
universe  but  themselves  and  their  object.  Hamlet,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  always  studying  himself.  This  world 
and  the  other,  too,  are  always  present  to  his  mind,  and 
there  in  the  corner  is  the  little  black  kobold  of  a  doubt 
making  mouths  at  him.  He  breaks  down  the  bridges 
before  him,  not  behind  him,  as  a  man  of  action  would 
do ;  but  there  is  something  more  than  this.  He  is  an 
ingrained  sceptic  ;  though  his  is  the  scepticism,  not  of 
reason,  but  of  feeling,  whose  root  is  want  of  faith  in 
himself.  In  him  it  is  passive,  a  malady  rather  than  a 
function  of  the  mind.  We  might  call  him  insincere  : 
not  that  he  was  in  any  sense  a  hypocrite,  but  only  that 
he  never  was  and  never  could  be  in  earnest.  Never 
10 


218  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

could  be,  because  no  man  without  intense  faith  in  some 
thing  ever  can.  Even  if  he  only  believed  in  himself, 
that  were  better  than  nothing ;  for  it  will  carry  a  man  a 
great  way  in  the  outward  successes  of  life,  nay,  will  even 
sometimes  give  him  the  Archimedean  fulcrum  for  mov 
ing  the  world.  But  Hamlet  .dauhts  evepythiag.  He 
doubts  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  just  after  seeing  his 
father's  spirit,  and  hearing  from  its  mouth  the  secrets  of 
the  other  world.  He  doubts  Horatio  even,  and  swears 
him  to  secrecy  on  the  cross  of  his  sword,  though  prob 
ably  he  himself  has  no  assured  belief  in  the  sacredness 
of  the  symbol.  He  doubts  Ophelia,  and  asks  her,  "  Arc 
you  honest  ] "  He  doubts  the  ghost,  after  he  has  had  a 
little  time  to  think  about  it,  and  so  gets  up  the  play  to 
test  the  guilt  of  the  king.  And  how  coherent  the  whole 
character  is  !  %  With  what  perfect  tact  and  judgment 
Shakespeare,  in  the  advice  to  the  players,  makes  him  an 
exquisite  critic  !  For  just  here  that  part  of  his  charac 
ter  which  would  be  weak  in  dealing  with  affairs  is  strong. 
A  wise  scepticism  is  the  first  attribute  of  a  good  critic. 
He  must  not  believe  that  the  fire-insurance  offices  will 
raise  their  rates  of  premium  on  Charles  River,  because 
the  new  volume  of  poems  is  printing  at  Riverside  or  the 
University  Press.  He  must  not  believe  so  profoundly  in 
the  ancients  as  to  think  it  wholly  out  of  the  question 
that  the  world  has  still  vigor  enough  in  its  loins  to  be 
get  some  one  who  will  one  of  these  days  be  as  good  an 
ancient  as  any  of  them. 

Another  striking  quality  in  Hamlet's  nature  is  his  per 
petual  inclination  to  irony.  I  think  this  has  been  gen 
erally  passed  over  too  lightly,  as  if  it  were  something 
external  and  accidental,  rather  assumed  as  a  mask  than 
part  of  the  real  nature  of  the  man.  It  seems  to  me  to 
go  deeper,  to  be  something  innate,  and  not  merely  facti 
tious.  It  is  nothing  like  the  grave  irony  of  Socrates, 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  219 

which  was  the  weapon  of  a  man  thoroughly  in  earnest, 
—  the  boomerang  of  argument,  which  one  throws  in  the 
opposite  direction  of  what  he  means  to  hit,  and  which 
seems  to  be  flying  away  from  the  adversary,  who  will 
presently  find  himself  knocked  down  by  it.  It  is  not 
like  the  irony  of  Timon,  which  is  but  the  wilful  refrac 
tion  of  a  clear  mind  twisting  awry  whatever  enters  it,  — 
or  of  lago,  which  is  the  slime  that  a  nature  essentially 
evil  loves  to  trail  over  all  beauty  and  goodness  to  taint 
them  with  distrust :  it  is  the  half-jest,  half-earnest  of  an 
inactive  temperament  that  has  not  quite  made  up  its 
mind  whether  life  is  a  reality  or  no,  whether  men  were 
not  made  in  jest,  and  which  amuses  itself  equally  with 
finding  a  deep  meaning  in  trivial  things  and  a  trifling 
one  in  the  profoundest  mysteries  of  being,  because  the 
want  of  earnestness  in  its  own  essence  infects  everything 
else  with  its  own  indifference.  If  there  be  now  and  then 
an  unmannerly  rudeness  and  bitterness  in  it,  as  in  the 
scenes  with  Polonius  and  Osrick,  we  must  remember  that 
Hamlet  was  just  in  the  condition  which  spurs  men  to 
sallies  of  this  kind :  dissatisfied,  at  one  neither  with  the 
world  nor  with  himself,  and  accordingly  casting  about 
for  something  out  of  himself  to  vent  his  spleen  tipon. 
But  even  in  these  passages  there  is  no  hint  of  earnest 
ness,  of  any  purpose  beyond  the  moment;  they  are  mere 
cat's-paws  of  vexation,  and  not  the  deep-raking  ground- 
swell  of  passion,  as  we  see  it  in  the  sarcasm  of  Lear. 

The  question  of  Hamlet's  madness  has  been  much  dis 
cussed  and  variously  decided.  High  medical  authority 
has  pronounced,  as  usual,  on  both  sides  of  the  question. 
But  the  induction  has  been  drawn  from  too  narrow 
premises,  being  based  on  a  mere  diagnosis  of  the  case, 
and  not  on  an  appreciation  of  the  character  in  its  com 
pleteness.  We  have  a  case  of  pretended  madness  in  the 
Edgar  of  King  Lear ;  and  it  is  certainly  true  that  that 


220  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

is  a  charcoal  sketch,  coarsely  outlined,  compared  with 
the  delicate  drawing,  the  lights,  shades,  and  half-tints 
of  the  portraiture  in  Hamlet.  But  does  this  tend  to 
prove  that  the  madness  of  the  latter,  because  truer  to 
the  recorded  observation  of  experts,  is  real,  and  meant 
to  be  real,  as  the  other  to  be  fictitious  ?  Not  in  the 
least,  as  it  appears  to  me.  Hamlet,  among  all  the 
y  characters  of  Shakespeare,  is  the  most  eminently  a  meta- 
/\  physician  and  psychologist.  He  is  a  close  observer,  con 
tinually  analyzing  his  own  nature  and  that  of  others, 
letting  fall  his  little  drops  of  acid  irony  on  all  who  come 
near  him,  to  make  them  show  what  they  are  made- of. 
Even  Ophelia  is  not  too  sacred,  Osrick  not  too  contempti 
ble  for  experiment.  If  such  a  man  assumed  madness, 
he  would  play  his  part  perfectly.  If  Shakespeare  him 
self,  without  going  mad,  could  so  observe  and  remember 
all  the  abnormal  symptoms  as  to  be  able  to  reproduce 
them  in  Hamlet,  why  should  it  be  beyond  the  power  of 
Hamlet  to  reproduce  them  in  himself  1  If  you  deprive 
Hamlet  of  reason,  there  is  no  truly  tragic  motive  left. 
He  would  be  a  fit  subject  for  Bedlam,  but  not  for  the 
stage.  We  might  have  pathology  enough,  but  no  pathos. 
Ajax  first  becomes  tragic  when  he  recovers  his  wits.  If 
Hamlet  is  irresponsible,  the  whole  play  is  a  chaos.  That 
he  is  not  so  might  be  proved  by  evidence  enough,  were 
it  not  labor  thrown  away. 

This  feigned  madness  of  Hamlet's  is  one  of  the  few 
points  in  which  Shakespeare  has  kept  close  to  the  old 
story  on  which  he  founded  his  play ;  and  as  he  never 
decided  without  deliberation,  so  he  never  acted  without 
unerring  judgment.  Hamlet  drifts  through  the  whole 
tragedy.  He  never  keeps  on  one  tack  long  enough  to 
get  steerage-way,  even  if,  in  a  nature  like  his,  with  those 
electric  streamers  of  whim  and  fancy  forever  wavering 
across  the  vault  of  his  brain,  the  needle  of  judgment 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE.  221 

would  point  in  one  direction  long  enough  to  strike  a 
course  by.  The  scheme  of  simulated  insanity  is  pre 
cisely  the  one  he  would  have  been  likely  to  hit  upon,  be 
cause  it  enabled  him  to  follow  his  own  bent,  and  to  drift 
with  an  apparent  purpose,  postponing  decisive  action  by 
the  very  means  he  adopts  to  arrive  at  its  accomplish 
ment,  and  satisfying  himself  with  the  show  of  doing  - ' 
something  that  he  may  escape  so  much  the  longer  the 
dreaded  necessity  of  really  doing  anything  at  all.  It 
enables  him  to  play  with  life  and  duty,  instead  of  tak 
ing  them  by  the  rougher  side,  where  alone  any  firm  grip 
is  possible,  — to  feel  that  he  is  on  the  way  toward  ac 
complishing  somewhat,  when  he  is  really  paltering  with 
his  own  irresolution.  Nothing,  I  think,  could  be  more 
finely  imagined  than  this.  Voltaire  complains  that  he 
goes  mad  without  any  sufficient  object  or  result.  Per 
fectly  true,  and  precisely  what  was  most  natural  for  him 
to  do,  and,  accordingly,  precisely  what  Shakespeare 
meant  that  he  should  do.  It  was  delightful  to  him  to 
indulge  his  imagination  and  humor,  to  prove  his  ca 
pacity  for  something  by  playing  a  part :  the  one  thing  he 
could  not  do  was  to  bring  himself  to  act,  unless  when 
surprised  by  a  sudden  impulse  of  suspicion,  —  as  where 
he  kills  Polonius,  and  there  he  could  not  see  his  victim. 
He  discourses  admirably  of  suicide,  but  does  not  kill 
himself ;  lie  talks  daggers,  but  uses  none.  He  puts  by 
the  chance  to  kill  the  king  with  the  excuse  that  he  will 
not  do  it  while  he  is  praying,  lest  his  soul  be  saved 
thereby,  though  it  is  more  than  doubtful  whether  he  be 
lieved  it  himself.  He  allows  himself  to  be  packed  off  to 
England,  without  any  motive  except  that  it  would  for 
the  time  take  him  farther  from  a  present  duty  :  the 
more  disagreeable  to  a  nature  like  his  because  it  was 
present,  and  not  a  mere  matter  for  speculative  consider 
ation.  When  Goethe  made  his  famous  comparison  of 


222  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

the  acorn  planted  in  a  vase  which  it  bursts  with  ita 
growth,  and  says  that  in  like  manner  Hamlet  is  a  na 
ture  which  breaks  down  under  the  weight  of  a  duty  too 
great  for  it  to  bear,  he  seems  to  have  considered  the 
character  too  much  from  one  side.  Had  Hamlet  actually 
killed  himself  to  escape  his  too  onerous  commission, 
Goethe's  conception  of  him  would  have  been  satisfactory 
enough.  But  Hamlet  was  hardly  a  sentimentalist,  like 
"VVerther ;  on  the  contrary,  he  saw  things  only  too 
clearly  in  the  dry  north-light  of  the  intellect.  It  is 
chance  that  at  last  brings  him  to  his  end.  It  would  ap 
pear  rather  that  Shakespeare  intended  to  show  us  an 
imaginative  temperament  brought  face  to  face  with  actu 
alities,  into  any  clear  relation  of  sympathy  with  which 
it  cannot  bring  itself.  The  very  means  that  Shakespeare 
makes  use  of  to  lay  upon  him  the  obligation  of  acting  — 
the  ghost  —  really  seems  to  make  it  all  the  harder  for  him 
to  act ;  for  the  spectre  but  gives  an  additional  excitement 
to  his  imagination  and  a  fresh  topic  for  his  scepticism. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  evolve  any  high  moral  signifi 
cance  from  the  play,  even  if  I  thought  it  possible ;  for 
that  would  be  aside  from  the  present  purpose.  The 
scope  of  the  higher  drama  is  to  represent  life,  not  every 
day  life,  it  is  true,  but  life  lifted  above  the  plane  of 
bread-and-butter  associations,  by  nobler  reaches  of  lan 
guage,  by  the  influence  at  once  inspiring  and  modulating 
of  verse,  by  an  intenser  play  of  passion  condensing  that 
misty  mixture  of  feeling  and  reflection  which  makes  the 
ordinary  atmosphere  of  existence  into  flashes  of  thought 
and  phrase  whose  brief,  but  terrible,  illumination  prints 
the  outworn  landscape  of  every-day  upon  our  brains, 
with  its  little  motives  and  mean  results,  in  lines  of  tell 
tale  fire.  The  moral  office  of  tragedy  is  to  show  us  our 
own  weaknesses  idealized  in  grander  figures  and  more  aw 
ful  results,  —  to  teach  us  that  what  we  pardon  in  our- 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MOEE.  223 

selves  as  venial  faults,  if  they  seem  to  have  but  slight 
influence  on  our  immediate  fortunes,  have  arms  as  long 
as  those  of  kings,  and  reach  forward  to  the  catastrophe 
of  our  lives,  that  they  are  dry-rotting  the  very  fibre  of 
will  and  conscience,  so  that,  if  we  should  be  brought  to 
the  test  of  a  great  temptation  or  a  stringent  emergency, 
we  must  be  involved  in  a  ruin  as  sudden  and  complete 
as  that  we  shudder  at  in  the  unreal  scene  of  the  theatre. 
But  the  primary  object  of  a  tragedy  is  not  to  inculcate  a 
formal  moral.  Eepresenting  life,  it  teaches,  like  life,  by 
indirection,  by  those  nods  and  winks  that  are  thrown 
away  on  us  blind  horses  in  such  profusion.  We  may 
learn,  to  be  sure,  plenty  of  lessons  from  Shakespeare. 
We  are  not  likely  to  have  kingdoms  to  divide,  crowns 
foretold  us  by  weird  sisters,  a  father's  death  to  avenge, 
or  to  kill  our  wives  from  jealousy  ;  but  Lear  may  teach 
us  to  draw  the  line  more  clearly  between  a  wise  gene 
rosity  and  a  loose-handed  weakness  of  giving ;  Macbeth, 
how  one  sin  involves  another,  and  forever  another,  by  a 
fatal  parthenogenesis,  and  that  the  key  which  unlocks 
forbidden  doors  to  our  will  or  passion  leaves  a  stain  on 
the  hand,  that  may  not  be  so  dark  as  blood,  but  that 
will  not  out;  Hamlet,  that  all  the  noblest  gifts  of  per 
son,  temperament^and  mind  slip  like  «and  through  the 
graspj^jyjjjafirm  purpose  ;  Othello,  that  the  perpetual 
silt  of  some  one  weakness,  the  eddies  of  a  suspicious 
temper  depositing  their  one  impalpable  layer  after  an 
other,  may  build  up  a  shoal  on  which  an  heroic  life  and 
an  otherwise  magnanimous  nature  may  bilge  and  go  to 
pieces.  \A11  this  we  may  learn,  and  much  more,  and 
Shakespeare  was  no  doubt  well  aware  of  all  this  and 
more ;  but  I  do  not  believe  that  he  wrote  his  plays 
with  any  such  didactic  purpose.)  He  knew  human  na 
ture  too  well  not  to  know  that  one  thorn  of  experience 
is  worth  a  whole  wilderness  of  warning,  —  that,  where 


224  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

one  man  shapes  his  life  by  precept  and  example,  there 
are  a  thousand  who  have  it  shaped  for  them  by  impulse 
and  by  circumstances.  He  did  not  mean  his  great  trage 
dies  for  scarecrows,  as  if  the  nailing  of  one  hawk  to 
the  barn-door  would  prevent  the  next  from  coming  down 
souse  into  the  hen-yard.  No,  it  is  not  the  poor  bleach 
ing  victim  hung  up  to  moult  its  draggled  feathers  in  the 
rain  that  he  wishes  to  show  us.  He  loves  the  hawk- 
nature  as  well  as  the  hen-nature  j  and  if  he  is  unequalled 
in  anything,  it  is  in  that  sunny  breadth  of  view,  that 
impregnability  of  reason,  that  looks  down  all  ranks  and 
conditions  of  men,  all  fortune  and  misfortune,  with  the 
equal  eye  of  the  pure  artist. 

Whether  I  have  fancied  anything  into  Hamlet  which 

fthe  author  never  dreamed  of  putting  there  I  do  not 
greatly  concern  myself  to  inquire.  Poets  are  always  en 
titled  to  a  royalty  on  whatever  we  find  in  their  works ; 
for  these  fine  creations  as  truly  build  themselves  up  in 
the  brain  as  they  are  built  up  with  deliberate  fore 
thought.  Praise  art  as  we  will,  that  which  the  artist 
did  not  mean  to  put  into  his  work,  but  which  found  it 
self  there  by  some  generous  process  of  Nature  of  which 
he  was  as  unaware  as  the  blue  river  is  of  its  rhyme  with 
the  blue  sky,  has  somewhat  in  it  that  snatches  us  into 
sympathy  with  higher  things  than  those  which  come  by 
plot  and  observation.  Goethe  wrote  his  Faust  in  its 
earliest  form  without  a  thought  of  the  deeper  meaning 
which  the  exposition  of  an  age  of  criticism  was  to  find 
in  it  :  without  foremeaning  it,  he  had  impersonated  in 
Mephistopheles  the  genius  of  his  century.  Shall  this 
subtract  from  the  debt  we  owe  him  1  Not  at  all.  If 
originality  were  conscious  of  itself,  it  would  have  lost  its 
right  to  be  original.  I  believe  that  Shakespeare  intended 
to  impersonate  in  Hamlet  not  a  mere  metaphysical  entity, 
but  a  man  of  flesh  and  blood :  yet  it  is  certainly  curious 


SHAKESPEARE   ONCE   MORE. 

how  prophetically  typical  the  character  is  of  that  intro-    f 
version  of  mind  which  is  so  constant  a  phenomenon  of   / 
these  latter  days,  of  that  over-consciousness  which  wastes 
itself  in  analyzing   the   motives  of   action   instead   of 
acting. 

The  old  painters  had  a  rule,  that  all  compositions 
should  be  pyramidal  in  form,  —  a  central  figure,  from 
which  the  others  slope  gradually  away  on  the  two  sides. 
Shakespeare  probably  had  never  heard  of  this  rule,  and, 
if  he  had,  would  not  have  been  likely  to  respect  it  more 
than  he  has  the  so-called  classical  unities  of  time  and 
place.  But  he  understood  perfectly  the  artistic  advan 
tages  of  gradation,  contrast,  and  relief.  Taking  Hamlet 
as  the  key-note,  we  find  in  him  weakness  of  character, 
which,  on  the  one  hand,  is  contrasted  with  the  feebleness 
that  springs  from  overweening  conceit  in  Polonius  and 
with  frailty  of  temperament  in  Ophelia,  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  brought  into  fuller  relief  by  the  steady 
force  of  Horatio  and  the  impulsive  violence  of  Laertes, 
who  is  resolute  from  thoughtlessness,  just  as  Hamlet  is 
irresolute  from  overplus  of  thought. 

If  we  must  draw  a  moral  from  Hamlet,  it  would  seem  I  \ 
to  be,  that  Will  is  Fate,  and  that,  Will  once  abdicating,  t 
the  inevitable  successor  in  the  regency  is  Chance.  Had 
Hamlet  acted,  instead  of  musing  how  good  it  would  be 
to  act,  the  king  might  have  been  the  only  victim.  As 
it  is,  all  the  main  actors  in  the  story  are  the  fortuitous 
sacrifice  of  his  irresolution.  We  see  how  a  single  great 
vice  of  character  at  last  draws  to  itself  as  allies  and 
confederates  all  other  weaknesses  of  the  man,  as  in  civil 
wars  the  timid  and  the  selfish  wait  to  throw  themselves 
upon  the  stronger  side. 

"  In  Life's  small  things  be  resolute  and  great 
To  keep  thy  muscles  trained:  know'st  thou  when  Fate 
Thy  measure  takes  ?  or  when  she  '11  say  to  thee, 
'  I  find  thee  worthy,  do  this  thing  for  me  '  ?  " 

10*     *  O 


226  SHAKESPEARE   ONCE  MORE. 

I  have  said  that  it  was  doubtful  if  Shakespeare  had 
any  conscious  moral  intention  in  his  writings.^)  Jrneant 
tfnly  that  he  was  purely  and  primarily  j5oetT)  And 
while  he  was  an  English  poet  in  a  sense  that/is  true 
of  no  other,  his  method  was  thoroughly  Greek,  yet 
with  this  remarkable  diflerence, —  that,  while  the  Greek 
dramatists  took  purely  national  themes  and  gave  them 
a  universal  interest  by  their  mode  of  treatment,  he 
took  what  may  be  called  cosmopolitan  traditions,  le 
gends  of  human  nature,  and  nationalized  them  by  the 
ififusion  of  his  perfectly  Anglican  breadth  of  character 
and  solidity  of  understanding.  Wonderful  as  his  ima 
gination  and  fancy  are,  his  perspicacity  and  artistic 
discretion  are  more  so.  This  country  tradesman's  son, 
coming  up  to  London,  could  set  high-bred  wits,  like 
Beaumont,  uncopiable  lessons  in  drawing'  gentlemen 
such  as  are  seen  nowhere  else  but  on  the  canvas  of 
Titian;  he  could  take  Ulysses  away  from  Homer  and 
expand  the  shrewd  and  crafty  islander  into)  a  statesman 
whose  words  are  the  pith  of  history.  But  what  makes 
him  yet  more  exceptional  was  his  utterly  unimpeachable 
judgment,  and  that  poise  of  character  which  enabled 
him  to  be  at  once  the  greatest  of  poets  and  so  unnotice- 
able  a  good  citizen  as  to  leave  no  incidents  for  biography. 
His  material  was  never  far-sought ;  (it  is  still  disputed 
whether  the  fullest  head  of  which  we  have  record  were 
cultivated  beyond  the  range  of  grammar-school  prece 
dent  !)  but  he  used  it  with  a  poetic  instinct  which  we 
cannot  parallel,  identified  himself  with  it,  yet  remained 
always  its  born  and  questionless  master.  He  finds  the 
Clown  and  Fool  upon  the  stage,  —  he  makes  them  the 
tools  of  his  pleasantry,  his  satire,  and  even  his  pathos  ; 
he  finds  a  fading  rustic  superstition,  and  shapes  out  of 
it  ideal  Pucks,  Titanias,  and  Ariels,  in  whose  existence 
statesmen  and  scholars  believe  forever.  Always  £oetjjie 


SllAKKSI'EAEE   ONCE   MORE.  227 

subjects  all  to  the  ends  of  his  art,  and  gives  in  Hamlet 
the  churchyard  ghost,  but  with  the  cothurnus  on,  —  the 
messenger,  of  God's  revenge  against  murder ;  always 
I)hil£saplie¥,  he  traces  in  Macbeth  the  metaphysics  of 
apparitions,  painting  the  shadowy  Banquo  only  on  the 
o'erwrought  brain  of  the  murderer,  and  staining  the 
hand  of  his  wife-accomplice  (because  she  was  the  more 
refined  and  higher  nature)  with  the  disgustful  blood-spot 
that  is  not  there.  We  say  he  had  no  moral  intention, 
for  the  reason,  that,  as  artist,  it  was  not  his  to  deal  with 
the  realities,  but  only  with  the  shows  of  things ;  yet, 
with  a  temperament  so  just,  an  insight  so  inevitable  as 
his,  it  was  impossible  that  the  moral  reality,  which  un- ' 
derlies  the  mirage  of  the  poet's  vision,  should  not  always 
be  suggested.  His^  humor  and_satire  are  never  of  the 
destructive  kind  \  what  he  does  in  that  way  is  suggestive 
only,  —  not  breaking  bubbles  with  Thor's  hammer,  but 
puffing  them  away  with  the  breath  of  a  Clown,  jor  shiv 
ering  them  with  the  light  laugh  of  a  genial  cynic.  Men 
go  about  to  prove  the  existence  of  a  God  !  Was  it  a  bit 
of  phosphorus,  that  brain  whose  creations  are  so  real, 
that,  mixing  with  them,  we  feel  as  if  we  ourselves  were 
but  fleeting  magic-lantern  shadows  1 

But  higher  even  than  the  genius  we  rate  the  charac^ 
tcr  of  this  unique  man,  and  the  grand  impersonality  of 
what  he  wrote.  What  has  he  told  us  of  himself  1  In 
our  self-exploiting  nineteenth  century,"with  its  melan 
choly  liver-complaint,  how  serene  and  high  he  seems  ! 
If  he  had  sorrows,  he  has  made  them  the  woof  of  ever 
lasting  consolation  to  his  kind  ;  and  if,  as  poets  are  wont 
to  whine,  the  outward  world  was  cold  to  him,  its  biting 
air  did  but  trace  itself  in  loveliest  frost-work  of  fancy  on 
the  many  windows  of  that  self-centred  and  cheerful 
soul. 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTIMES  AGO.' 


THE  history  of  New  England  is  written  imperishably 
on  the  face  of  a  continent,  and  in  characters  as  benefi 
cent  as  they  are  enduring.  In  the  Old  World  national 
pride  feeds  itself  with  the  record  of  battles  and  con 
quests  ;  —  battles  which  proved  nothing  and  settled 
nothing ;  conquests  which  shifted  a  boundary  on  the 
map,  and  put  one  ugly  head  instead  of  another  on  the 
coin  which  the  people  paid  to  the  tax-gatherer.  But 
wherever  the  New-Englander  travels  among  the  sturdy 
commonwealths  which  have  sprung  from  the  seed  of  the 
Mayflower,  churches,  schools,  colleges,  tell  him  where 
the  men  of  his  race  have  been,  or  their  influence  pene 
trated  ;  and  an  intelligent  freedom  is  the  monument  of 
conquests  whose  results  are  not  to  be  measured  in  square 
miles.  Next  to  the  fugitives  whom  Moses  led  out  of 
Egypt,  the  little  ship-load  of  outcasts  who  landed  at 
Plymouth  two  centuries  and  a  half  ago  are  destined  to 
influence  the  future  of  the  world.  The  spiritual  thirst 
of  mankind  has  for  ages  been  quenched  at  Hebrew  foun 
tains  ;  but  the  embodiment  in  human  institutions  of 

*  History  of  New  England  during  the  Stuart  Dynasty.  By  JOHN 
GORHAM  PALFREY.  Vol.  III.  Boston:  Little,  Brown,  &  Co.  1864. 
pp.  xxii,  648. 

Collections  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  Third  Series, 
Vols.  IX.  and  X.  Fourth  Series,  Vols.  VI.  and  VII. 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     229 

truths  uttered  by  the  Son  of  man  eighteen  centuries 
ago  was  to  be  mainly  the  work  of  Puritan  thought 
and  Puritan  self-devotion.  Leave  New  England  out  in 
the  cold !  While  you  are  plotting  it,  she  sits  by  every 
fireside  in  the  land  where  there  is  piety,  culture,  and 
free  thought. 

Faith  in  God,  faith  in  man,  faith  in  work,  —  this  is 
the  short  formula  in  which  we  may  sum  up  the  teaching 
of  the  founders  of  New  England,  a  creed  ample  enough 
for  this  life  and  the  next.  If  their  municipal  regula 
tions  smack  somewhat  of  Judaism,  yet  there  can  be  no 
nobler  aim  or  more  practical  wisdom  than  theirs  ;  for  it 
was  to  make  the  law  of  man  a  living  counterpart  of  the 
law  of  God,  in  their  highest  conception  of  it.  Were 
they  too  earnest  in  the  strife  to  save  their  souls  alive  1 
That  is  still  the  problem  which  every  wise  and  brave 
man  is  lifelong  in  solving.  If  the  Devil  take  a  less 
hateful  shape  to  us  than  to  our  fathers,  he  is  as  busy 
with  us  as  with  them ;  and  if  we  cannot  find  it  in  our 
hearts  to  break  with  a  gentleman  of  so  much  worldly 
wisdom,  who  gives  such  admirable  dinners,  and  whose 
manners  are  so  perfect,  so  much  the  worse  for  us. 

Looked  at  on  the  outside,  New  England  history  is  dry 
and  unpicturesque.  There  is  no  rustle  of  silks,  no  wav 
ing  of  plumes,  no  clink  of  golden  spurs.  Our  sympa 
thies  are  not  awakened  by  the  changeful  destinies,  the 
rise  and  fall,  of  great  families,  whose  doom  was  in  their 
blood.  Instead  of  all  this,  we  have  the  homespun  fates 
i  of  Cephas  and  Prudence  repeated  in  an  infinite  series  of 
peaceable  sameness,  and  finding  space  enough  for  record 
in  the  family  Bible  j  we  have  the  noise  of  axe  and  ham 
mer  and  saw,  an  apotheosis  of  dogged  work,  where,  re 
versing  the  fairy-tale,  nothing  is  left  to  luck,  and,  if 
there  be  any  poetry,  it  is  something  that  cannot  be 
helped,  —  the  waste  of  the  water  over  the  dam.  Ex- 


230    NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

trinsically,  it  is  prosaic  and  plebeian  ;  intrinsically,  it  is 
poetic  and  noble  j  for  it  is,  perhaps,  the  most  perfect  in 
carnation  of  an  idea  the  world  has  ever  seen.  That  idea 
was  not  to  found  a  democracy,  nor  to  charter  the  city 
of  New  Jerusalem  by  an  act  of  the  General  Court,  as 
gentlemen  seem  to  think  whose  notions  of  history  and 
human  nature  rise  like  an  exhalation  from  the  good 
things  at  a  Pilgrim  Society  dinner.  Not  in  the  least. 
They  had  no  faith  in  the  Divine  institution  of  a  system 

|  which  gives  Teague,  because  he  can  dig,  as  miich  influ 
ence  as  Ralph,  because  he  can  think,  nor  in  personal  at 
the  expense  of  general  freedom.  Their  view  of  human 
rights  was  not  so  limited  that  it  could  ilot  take  in  hu 
man  relations  and  duties  also.  They  would  have  been 
likely  to  answer  the  claim,  "  I  am  as  good  as  anybody," 
by  a  quiet  "  Yes,  for  some  things,  but  not  for  others ;  as 
good,  doubtless,  in  your  place,  where  all  things  are  good." 
What  the  early  settlers  of  Massachusetts  did  intend, 
and  what  they  accomplished,  was  the  founding  here  of  a 
new  England,  and  a  better  one,  where  the  political  super 
stitions  and  abuses  of  the  old  should  never  have  leave  to 
take  root.  So  much,  we  may  say,  they  deliberately  in 
tended.  No  nobles,  either  lay  or  cleric,  no  great  landed 
estates,  and  no  universal  ignorance  as  the  seed-plot  of 
vice  and  unreason ;  but  an  elective  magistracy  and  clergy, 
land  for  all  who  would  till  it,  and  reading  and  writing, 

I  will  ye  nill  ye,  instead.  Here  at  last,  it  would  seem, 
simple  manhood  is  to  have  a  chance  to  play  his  stake 
against  Fortune  with  honest  dice,  uncogged  by  those 
three  hoary  sharpers,  Prerogative,  Patricianism,  and 
Priestcraft.  Whoever  has  looked  into  the.  pamphlets 
published  in  England  during  the  Great  Rebellion  cannot 

.fbut  have  been  struck  by  the  fact,  that  the  principles  and 
practice  of  the  Puritan  Colony  had  begun  to  react  with 
considerable  force  on  the  mother  country ;  and  the  pol- 


NEW   ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES   AGO.  231 

icy  of  the  retrograde  party  there,  after  the  Restoration, 
in  its  dealings  with  New  England,  finds  a  curious  par 
allel  as  to  its  motives  (time  will  show  whether  as  to  its 
results)  in  the  conduct  of  the  same  party  towards  Amer 
ica  during  the  last  four  years.*  This  influence  and  this 
fear  alike  bear  witness  to  the  energy  of  the  principles  at 
work  here. 

We  have  said  that  the  details  of  New  England  his 
tory  were  essentially  dry  and  unpoetic.  Everything  is 
near,  authentic,  and  petty.  There  is  no  mist  of  dis 
tance  to  soften  outlines,  no  mirage  of  tradition  to  give 
characters  and  events  an  imaginative  loom.  So  much 
downright  work  was  perhaps  never  wrought  on  the 
earth's  surface  in  the  same  space  of  time  as  during  the 
first  forty  years  after  the  settlement.  But  mere  work 
is  unpicturesque,  and  void  of  sentiment.  Irving  in 
stinctively  divined  and  admirably  illustrated  in  his 
"  Knickerbocker "  the  humorous  element  which  lies  in 
this  nearness  of  view,  this  clear,  prosaic  daylight  of 
modernness,  and  this  poverty  of  stage  properties,  which 
makes  the  actors  and  the  deeds  they  were  concerned  in 
seem  ludicrously  small  when  contrasted  with  the  semi- 
mythic  grandeur  in  which  we  have  clothed  them,  as  we 
look  backward  from  the  crowned  result,  and  fancy  a 
cause  as  majestic  as  our  conception  of  the  effect.  There 
was,  indeed,  one  poetic  side  to  the  existence  otherwise 
so  narrow  and  practical;  and  to  have  conceived  this, 
however  partially,  is  the  one  original  and  American 
thing  in  Cooper.  This  diviner  glimpse  illumines  the 
lives  of  our  Daniel  Boones,  the  man  of  civilization  and 
old-world  ideas  confronted  with  our  forest  solitudes,  — 
confronted,  too,  for  the  first  time,  with  his  real  self,  and 
so  led  gradually  to  disentangle  the  original  substance  of 
his  manhood  from  the  artificial  results  of  culture.  Here 
*  Written  in  December,  1864. 


232     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

was  our  new  Adam  of  the  wilderness,  forced  to  name 
anew,  not  the  visible  creation  of  God,  but  the  invisible 
creation  of  man,  in  those  forms  that  lie  at  the  base  of 
social  institutions,  so  insensibly  moulding  personal  char 
acter  and  controlling  individual  action.  Here  is  the  pro 
tagonist  of  our  New  World  epic,  a  figure  as  poetic  as 
that  of  Achilles,  as  ideally  representative  as  that  of  Don 
Quixote,  as  romantic  in  its  relation  to  our  homespun 
and  plebeian  mythus  as  Arthur  in  his  to  the  mailed  and 
plumed  cycle  of  chivalry.  We  do  not  mean,  of  course, 
that  Cooper's  "  Leatherstocking  "  is  all  this  or  anything 
like  it,  but  that  the  character  typified  in  him  is  ideally 
and  potentially  all  this  and  more. 

But  whatever  was  poetical  in  the  lives  of  the  early 
New-Englanders  had  something  shy,  if  not  sombre, 
about  it.  If  their  natures  flowered,  it  was  out  of  sight, 
like  the  fern.  It  was  in  the  practical  that  they  showed 
their  true  quality,  as  Englishmen  are  wont.  It  has 
been  the  fashion  lately  with  a  few  feeble-minded  persons 
to  undervalue  the  New  England  Puritans,  as  if  they 
were  nothing  more  than  gloomy  and  narrow-minded 
fanatics.  But  all  the  charges  brought  against  these 
large-minded  and  far-seeing  men  are  precisely  those  which 
a  really  able  fanatic,  Joseph  de  Maistre,  lays  at  the  door 
of  Protestantism.  Neither  a  knowledge  of  human  na 
ture  nor  of  history  justifies  us  in  confounding,  as  is 
commonly  done,  the  Puritans  of  Old  and  New  England, 
or  the  English  Puritans  of  the  third  with  those  of  the 
fifth  decade  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Fanaticism, 
or,  to  call  it  by  its  milder  name,  enthusiasm,  is  only 
powerful  and  active  so  long  as  it  is  aggressive.  Estab 
lish  it  firmly  in  power,  and  it  becomes  conservatism, 
whether  it  will  or  no.  A  sceptre  once  put  in  the  hand, 
the  grip  is  instinctive  ;  and  he  who  is  firmly  seated  in 
authority  soon  learns  to  think  security,  and  not  progress, 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     233 

the  highest  lesson  of  statecraft.  From  the  summit  of 
power  men  no  longer  turn  their  eyes  upward,  but  be 
gin  to  look  about  them.  Aspiration  sees  only  one  side 
of  every  question ;  possession,  many.  And  the  English 
Puritans,  after  their  revolution  was  accomplished,  stood 
in  even  a  more  precarious  position  than  most  successful 
assailants  of  the  prerogative  of  whatever  is  to  continue 
in  being.  They  had  carried  a  political  end  by  means _ 
of  a  religious  revival.  The  fulcrum  on  which  they 
rested  their  lever  to  overturn  the  existing  order  of  things 
^(as  history  always  placidly  calls  the  particular  forms  of 
disorder  for  the  time  being)  was  in  the  soul  of  man.  They 
could  not  renew  the  fiery  gush  of  enthusiasm,  when 
once  the  molten  metal  had  begun  to  stiffen  in  the  mould 
of  policy  and  precedent.  The  religious  element  of  Pu 
ritanism  became  insensibly  merged  in  the  political ;  and, 
its  one  great  man  taken  away,  it  died,  as  passions  have 
done  before,  of  possession.  It  was  one  thing  to  shout 
with  Cromwell  before  the  battle  of  Dunbar,  "  Now,  Lord, 
arise,  and  let  thine  enemies  be  scattered  !  "  and  to  snuf 
fle,  "Rise,  Lord,  and  keep  us  safe  in  our  benefices,  our 
sequestered  estates,  and  our  five  per  cent ! "  Puritan 
ism  meant  something  when  Captain  Hodgson,  riding  out 
to  battle  through  the  morning  mist,  turns  over  the  com 
mand  of  his  troop  to  a  lieutenant,  and  stays  to  hear  the 
prayer  of  a  cornet,  there  was  "  so  much  of  God  in  it." 
Become  traditional,  repeating  the  phrase  without  the 
spirit,  reading  the  present  backward  as  if  it  were  writ 
ten  in  Hebrew,  translating  Jehovah  by  "  I  was  "  instead 
of  "  I  am,"  —  it  was  no  more  like  its  former  self  than 
the  hollow  drum  made  of  Zisca's  skin  was  like  the  grim 
captain  whose  soul  it  had  once  contained.  Yet  the  change 
was  inevitable,  for  it  is  not  safe  to  confound  the  things 
of  Csesar  with  the  things  of  God.  Some  honest  repub 
licans,  like  Ludlow,  were  never  able  to  comprehend  the 


234     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

chilling  contrast  between  the  ideal  aim  and  the  material 
fulfilment,  and  looked  askance  on  the  strenuous  reign 
of  Oliver,  —  that  rugged  boulder  of  primitive  manhood 
lying  lonely  there  on  the  dead  level  of  the  century,  — 
as  if  some  crooked  changeling  had  been  laid  in  the  cra 
dle  instead  of  that  fair  babe  of  the  Commonwealth  they 
had  dreamed.  Truly  there  is  a  tide  in  the  affairs  of 
men,  but  there  is  no  gulf-stream  setting  forever  in  one 
direction;  and  those  waves  of  enthusiasm  on  whose 
crumbling  crests  we  sometimes  see  nations  lifted  for  a 
gleaming  moment  are  wont  to  have  a  gloomy  trough 
before  and  behind. 

But  the  founders  of  New  England,  though  they  must 
have  sympathized  vividly  with  the  struggles  and  tri 
umphs  of  their  brethren  in  the  mother  country,  were 
never  subjected  to  the  same  trials  and  temptations, 
never  hampered  with  the  same  lumber  of  usages  and 
tradition.  They  were  not  driven  to  win  power  by 
doubtful  and  desperate  ways,  nor  to  maintain  it  by  any 
compromises  of  the  ends  which  make  it  worth  having. 
From  the  outset  they  were  builders,  without  need  of 
first  pulling  down,  whether  to  make  room  or  to  provide 
material.  For  thirty  years  after  the  colonization  of  the 
Bay,  they  had  absolute  power  to  mould  as  they  would 
the  character  of  their  adolescent  commonwealth..  Dur 
ing  this  time  a  whole  generation  would  have  grown  to 
manhood  who  knew  the  Old  World  only  by  report,  in 
whose  habitual  thought  kings,  nobles,  and  bishops  would 
be  as  far  away  from  all  present  and  practical  concern  as 
the  figures  in  a  fairy-tale,  and  all  whose  memories  and 
associations,  all  their  unconscious  training  by  eye  and 
ear,  were  New  English  wholly.  Nor  were  the  men  whose 
influence  was  greatest  in  shaping  the  framework  and  the 
policy  of  the  Colony,  in  any  true  sense  of  the  w'ord,  fa 
natics.  Enthusiasts,  perhaps,  they  were,  but  with  them 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.      '    235 

the  fermentation  had  never  gone  further  than  the  ripe 
ness  of  the  vinous  stage.  Disappointment  had  never 
made  it  acetous,  nor  had  it  ever  putrefied  into  the  tur 
bid  zeal  of  Fifth  Monarchism  and  sectarian  whimsey. 
There  is  no  better  ballast  for  keeping  the  mind  steady  on 
\its  keel,  and  saving  it  from  all  risk  of  crankiness,  than  1 
business.  And  they  were  business  men,  men  of  facts/' 
and  figures  no  less  than  of  religious  earnestness.  The 
sum  of  t\£ojiundred  thousand  pounds  had  been  invested 
in  their  undertaking,  —  a  sum,  for  that  time,  truly  enor 
mous  as  the  result  of  private  combination  for  a  doubtful 
experiment.  That  their  enterprise  might  succeed,  they 
must  show  a  balance  on  the  right  side  of  the  counting- 
house  ledger,  as  well  as  in  their  private  accounts  with 
their  own  souls.  The  liberty  of  praying  when  and  how 
they  would,  must  be  balanced  with  an  ability  of  paying 
when  and  as  they  ought.  Nor  is  the  resulting  fact  in 
this  case  at  variance  with  the  a  priori  theory.  They 
succeeded  in  making  their  thought  the  life  and  soul  of  a 
body  politic,  still  powerful,  still  benignly  operative,  after 
two  centuries ;  a  thing  which  no  mere  fanatic  ever  did 
or  ever  will  accomplish.  Sober,  earnest,  and  thoughtful 
men,  it  was  no  Utopia,  no  New  Atlantis,  no  realization 
of  a  splendid  dream,  which  they  had  at  heart,  but  the 
establishment  of  the  divine  principle  of  Authority  on 
the  common  interest  and  the  common  consent ;  the 
making,  by  a  contribution  from  the  free-will  of  all,  a 
power  which  should  curb  and  guide  the  free-will  of  each 
for  the  general  good.  If  they  were  stern  in  their  deal 
ings  with  sectaries,  it  should  be  remembered  that  the 
Colony  was  in  fact  the  private  property  of  the  Massa 
chusetts  Company,  that  unity  was  essential  to  its  suc 
cess,  and  that  John  of  Leyden  had  taught  them  how 
unendurable  by  the  nostrils  of  honest  men  is  the  cor 
ruption  of  the  right  of  private  judgment  in  the  evil  and 


236     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

selfish  hearts  of  men  when  no  thorough  mental  training 
has  developed  the  understanding  and  given  the  judg 
ment  its  needful  means  of  comparison  and  correction. 
They  knew  that  liberty  in  the  hands  of  feeble-minded 
and  unreasoning  persons  (and  all  the  worse  if  they  are 
honest)  means  nothing  more  than  the  supremacy  of 
their  particular  form  of  imbecility  ;  means  nothing  less, 
therefore,  than  downright  chaos,  a  Bedlam-chaos  of 
monomaniacs  and  bores.  What  was  to  be  done  with  men 
and  women,  who  bore  conclusive  witness  to  the  fall  of 
man  by  insisting  on  walking  up  the  broad-aisle  of  the 
meeting-house  in  a  costume  which  that  event  had  put 
forever  out  of  fashion  ]  About  their  treatment  of 
witches,  too,  there  has  been  a  great  deal  of  ignorant 
babble.  Puritanism  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  it. 
/  They  acted  under  a  delusion,  which,  with  an  exception 
;  here  and  there  (and  those  mainly  medical  men,  like 
^  Wierus  and  Webster),  darkened  the  understanding  of  all 
Christendom.  Dr.  Henry  More  was  no  Puritan ;  and 
his  letter  to  Glanvil,  prefixed  to  the  third  edition  of  the 
"Sadducismus  Triumphatus,"  was  written  in  1678,  only 
fourteen  years  before  the  trials  at  Salem.  Bekker's 
"Bezauberte  Welt"  was  published  in  1693  ;  and  in  the 
Preface  he  speaks  of  the  difficulty  of  overcoming  "  the 
prejudices  in  which  not  only  ordinary  men,  but  the 
learned  also,  are  obstinate."  In  Hathaway's  case,  1702, 
Chief- Justice  Holt,  in  charging  the  jury,  expresses  no 
disbelief  in  the  possibility  of  witchcraft,  and  the  indict 
ment  implies  its  existence.  Indeed,  the  natural  reaction 
from  the  Salem  mania  of  1692  put  an  end  to  belief  in 
devilish  compacts  and  demoniac  possessions  sooner  in 
New  England  than  elsewhere.  The  last  we  hear  of  it 
there  is  in  1720,  when  Rev.  Mr.  Turell  of  Medford  de 
tected  and  exposed  an  attempted  cheat  by  two  girls. 
Even  in  1692,  it  was  the  foolish  breath  of  Cotton  Mather 


NEW   ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES  AGO.  237 

and  others  of  the  clergy  that  blew  the  dying  embers  of 
this  ghastly  superstition  into  a  flame ;  and  they  were 
actuated  partly  by  a  desire  to  bring  about  a  religious 
revival,  which  might  stay  for  a  while  the  hastening  lapse 
of  their  own  authority,  and  still  more  by  that  credulous 
scepticism  of  feeble-minded  piety  which  dreads  the  cut- 
ting  away  of  an  orthodox  tumor  of  misbelief,  as  if  the 
life-blood  of  faith  would  follow,  and  would  keep  even  a 
stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  salvation,  if  only  enough 
generations  had  tripped  over  it  to  make  it  venerable. 
The  witches  were  condemned  on  precisely  the  same 
grounds  that  in  our  day  led  to  the  condemnation  of 
"  Essays  and  Reviews." 

But  Puritanism  was  already  in  the  decline  when  such 
things  were  possible.  What  had  been  a  wondrous  and 
intimate  experience  of  the  soul,  a  flash  into  the  very 
crypt  and  basis  of  man's  nature  from  the  fire  of  trial, 
had  become  ritual  and  tradition.  In  prosperous  times 
the  faith  of  one  generation  becomes  the  formality  of  the 
nejxt.  "~**~The  necessity  of  a  reformation,"  set  forth  by 
order  of  the  Synod  which  met  at  Cambridge  in  1679, 
though  no  doubt  overstating  the  case,  shows  how  much 
even  at  that  time  the  ancient  strictness  had  been  loos 
ened.  The  country  had  grown  rich,  its  commerce  was 
large,  and  wealth  did  its  natural  work  in  making  life 
softer  and  more  worldly,  commerce  in  deprovincializing 
the  minds  of  those  engaged  in  it.  But  Puritanism  had 
,  already  done  its  duty.  As  there  are  certain  creatures 
whose  whole  being  seems  occupied  with  an  egg-laying 
errand  they  are  sent  upon,  incarnate  ovipositors,  their 
bodies  but  bags  to  hold  this  precious  deposit,  their  legs 
of  use  only  to  carry  them  where  they  may  safeliest  be 
rid  of  it,  so  sometimes  a  generation  seems  to  have  no 
other  end  than  the  conception  and  ripening  of  certain 
germs.  Its  blind  stirrings,  its  apparently  aimless  seek- 


238    NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

ing  hither  and  thither,  are  but  the  driving  of  an  instinct 
to  be  done  with  its  parturient  function  toward  these  prin 
ciples  of  future  life  and  power.  Puritanism,  believing 
itself  quick  with  the  seed  of  religious  liberty,  laid,  with 
out  knowing  it,  the  egg  of  democracy.  The  English 
Puritans  pulled  down  church  and  state  to  rebuild  Zion 
on  the  ruins,  and  all  the  while  it  was  not  Zion,  but 
America,  they  were  building.  But  if  their  millennium 
went  by,  like  the  rest,  and  left  men  still  human ;  if 
they,  like  so  many  saints  and  martyrs  before  them,  lis 
tened  in  vain  for  the  sound  of  that  trumpet  which  was 
to  summon  all  souls  to  a  resurrection  from  the  body  of 
this  death  which  men  call  life,  —  it  is  not  for  us,  at  least, 
to  forget  the  heavy  debt  we  owe  them.  It  was  the  drums 
of  Naseby  and  D unbar  that  gathered  the  minute-men  on 
Lexington  Common ;  it  was  the  red  dint  of  the  axe  on 
\  Charles's  block  that  marked  One  in  our  era.  The  Puri 
tans  had  then*  faults.  They  were  narrow,  ungenial ; 
they  could  not  understand  the  text,  "  I  have  piped  to 
you  and  ye  have  not  danced,"  nor.  conceive  that  saving 
one's  soul  should  be  the  cheerfullest,  and  not  the  dreari 
est,  of  businesses.  Their  preachers  had  a  way,  like  the 
painful  Mr.  Perkins,  of  pronouncing  the  word  damn  with 
such  an  emphasis  as  left  a  doleful  echo  in  their  auditors' 
ears  a  good  while  after.  And  it  was  natural  that  men  who 
captained  or  accompanied  the  exodus  from  existing  forms 
and  associations  into  the  doubtful  wilderness  that  led  to 
the  promised  land,  should  find  more  to  their  purpose  in 
the  Old  Testament  than  in  the  New.  As  respects  the 
New  England  settlers,  however  visionary  some  of  their 
religious  tenets  may  have  been,  their  political  ideas  sa 
vored  of  the  realty,  and  it  was  no  Nephelococcygia  of 
which  they  drew  the  plan,  but  of  a  commonwealth  whose 
foundation  was  to  rest  on  solid  and  familiar  earth.  If 
what  they  did  was  done  in  a  corner,  the  results  of  it 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     239 

were  to  be  felt  to  the  ends  of  the  earth ;  and  the  figure 
of  Winthrop  should  be  as  venerable  in  history  as  that 
of  Romulus  is  barbarously  grand  in  legend. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  many  of  our  national  char 
acteristics,  which  are  sometimes  attributed  to  climate 
\  and  sometimes  to  institutions,  are  traceable  to  the  influ- 
!  ences  of  Puritan  descent.     We  are  apt  to  forget  how  very 
large  a  proportion  of  our  population  is  descended  from 
emigrants   who   came   over   before    1660.     Those  emi- 

O 

grants  were  in  great  part  representatives  of  that  element 
of  English  character  which  was  most  susceptible  of  re 
ligious  impressions ;  in  other  words,  the  most  earnest 
and  imaginative.  Our  people  still  differ  from  their 
English  cousins  (as  they  are  fond  of  calling  themselves 
when  they  are  afraid  we  may  do  them  a  mischief)  in  a 
certain  capacity  for  enthusiasm,  a  devotion  to  abstract 
principle,  an  openness  to  ideas,  a  greater  aptness  for 
intuitions  than  for  the  slow  processes  of  the  syllogism, 
and,  as  derivative  from  this,  in  minds  of  looser  texture, 
a  light-armed,  skirmishing  habit  of  thought,  and  a  posi 
tive  preference  of  the  birds  in  the  bush,  —  an  excellent 
quality  of  character  before  you  have  your  bird  in  the  hand. 
There  have  been  two  great  distributing  centres  of  the 
English  race  on  this  continent,  Massachusetts  and  Vir 
ginia.  Each  has  impressed  the  character  of  its  early 
legislators  on  the  swarms  it  has  sent  forth.  Their  ideas 
are  in  some  fundamental  respects  the  opposites  of  each 
other,  and  we  can  only  account  for  it  by  an  antagonism 
of  thought  beginning  with  the  early  framers  of  their 
respective  institutions.  New  England  abolished  caste ; 
in  Virginia  they  still  talk  of  "  quality  folks."  But  it 
was  in  making  education  not  only  common  to  all,  but  in 
some  sense  compulsory  on  all,  that  the  destiny  of  the 
free  republics  of  America  was  practically  settled.  Every 
man  was  to  be  trained,  not  only  to  the  use  of  arms,  but 


240     NEW  ENGLAND  .TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

of  his  wits  also ;  and  it  is  these  which  alone  make  the 
others  effective  weapons  for  the  maintenance  of  freedom. 
You  may  disarm  the  hands,  but  not  the  brains,  of  a 
people,  and  to  know  what  should  be  defended  is  the  first 
condition  of  successful  defence.  Simple  as  it  seems,  it 
was  a  great  discovery  that  the  key  of  knowledge  could 
turn  both  ways,  that  it  could  open,  as  well  as  lock,  the 
door  of  power  to  the  many.  The  only  things  a  New- 
Englander  was  ever  locked  out  of  were  the  jails.  It  is 
quite  true  that  ourJBepublic  is  the  heir  of  the  English 
Commonwealth ;  but  as  we  trace  events  backward  to 
their  causes,  we  shall  find  it  true  also,  that  what  made 
our  Revolution  a  foregone  conclusion  was  that  act  of  the 
General  Court,  passed  hx^Iay,  1647,  which  established 
the  system  of  common  schools>-— "  To  the  end  that 
learning  may  not  be  buried  in  the  graves  of  our  fore 
fathers  in  Church  and  Commonwealth,  the  Lord  as 
sisting  our  endeavors,  it  is  therefore  ordered  by  this 
Court  and  authority  thereof,  that  every  township  in  this 
jurisdiction,  after  the  Lord  hath  increased  them  to  fifty 
householders,  shall  then  forthwith  appoint  one  within 
their  towns  to  teach  all  such  children  as  shall  resort  to 
him  to  write  and  read." 

Passing  through  some  Massachusetts  village,  perhaps  at 
a  distance  from  any  house,  it  may  be  in  the  midst  of  a 
piece  of  woods  where  four  roads  meet,  one  may  sometimes 
even  yet  see  a  small  square  one-story  building,  whose  use 
would  not  be  long  doubtful.  It  is  summer,  and  the 
flickering  shadows  of  forest-leaves  dapple  the  roof  of  the 
little  porch,  whose  door  stands  wide,  and  shows,  hanging 
on  either  hand,  rows  of  straw  hats  and  bonnets,  that 
look  as  if  they  had  done  good  service.  As  you  pass  the 
open  windows,  you  hear  whole  platoons  of  high-pitched 
voices  discharging  words  of  two  or  three  syllables  with 
wonderful  precision  and  unanimity.  Then  there  is  a 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     241 

pause,  and  the  voice  of  the  officer  in  command  is  heard 
reproving  some  raw  recruit  whose  vocal  musket  hung 
fire.  Then  the  drill  of  the  small  infantry  begins  anew,  but 
pauses  again  because  some  urchin  —  who  agrees  with 
Voltaire  that  the  superfluous  is  a  very  necessary  thing  — 
m&sta  o-n  spelling  "  subtraction  "  with  an  s  too  much. 

If  you  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  born  and  bred  in 
the  Bay  State,  your  mind  is  thronged  with  half-sad, 
half-humorous  recollections.  The  a-b  abs  of  little  voices 
long  since  hushed  in  the  mould,  or  ringing  now  in  the 
pulpit,  at  the  bar,  or  in  the  Senate-chamber,  come  back 
to  the  ear  of  memory.  You  remember  the  high  stool 
on  which  culprits  used  to  be  elevated  with  the  tall  paper 
fool's-cap  on  their  heads,  blushing  to  the  ears ;  and  you 
think  with  wonder  how  you  have  seen  them  since  as 
men  climbing  the  world's  penance-stools  of  ambition 
without  a  blush,  and  gladly  giving  everything  for  life's 
caps  and  bells.  And  you  have  pleasanter  memories  of 
going  after  pond-lilies,  of  angling  for  horn-pouts,  — -  that 
queer  bat  among  the  fishes,  —  of  nutting,  of  walking 
over  the  creaking  snow-crust  in  winter,  when  the  warm, 
breath  of  every  household  was  curling  up  silently  in  the 
keen  blue  air.  You  wonder  if  life  has  any  rewards 
more  solid  and  permanent  than  the  Spanish  dollar  that 
was  hung  around  your  neck  to  be  restored  again  next  day, 
and  conclude  sadly  that  it  was  but  too  true  a  prophecy 
and  emblem  of  all  worldly  success.  But  your  moral 
izing  is  broken  short  off  by  a  rattle  of  feet  and  the  pour 
ing  forth  of  the  whole  swarm,  —  the  boys  dancing  and 
shouting,  —  the  mere  effervescence  of  the  fixed  air  of 
youth  and  animal  spirits  uncorked,  —  the  sedater  girls  in 
confidential  twos  and  threes  decanting  secrets  out  of  the 
mouth  of  one  cape-bonnet  into  that  of  another.  Times  have 
changed  since  the  jackets  and  trousers  used  to  draw  up 
on  one  side  of  the  road,  and  the  petticoats  on  the  other, 
11  p 


242     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTUPJES  AGO. 

to  salute  with  bow  and  courtesy  the  white  neckcloth  of 
the  parson  or  the  squire,  if  it  chanced  to  pass  during 
intermission. 

Now  this  little  building,  and  others  like  it,  were  an 
original  kind  of  fortification  invented  by  the  founders 
of  New  England.  They  are  the  martello-towers  that 
protect  our  coast.  This  was  the  great  discovery  of  our 
Puritan  forefathers.  They  were  the  first  lawgivers  who 
saw  clearly  and  enforced  practically  the  simple  moral  and 
political  truth,  that  knowledge  was  not  an  alms  to  be 
dependent  on  the  chance  charity  of  private  men  or  the 
precarious  pittance  of  a  trust-fund,  but  a  sacred  debt 
which  the  Commonwealth  owed  to  every  one  of  her 
children.  The  opening  of  the  first  grammar-school  was 
the  opening  of  the  first  trench  against  monopoly  in 
church  and  state ;  the  first  row  of  trammels  and  pot 
hooks  which  the  little  Shearjashubs  and  Elkanahs  blotted 
and  blubbered  across  their  copy-books,  was  the  pream 
ble  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  The  men  who 
gave  every  man  the  chance  to  become  a  landholder,  who 
made  the  transfer  of  land  easy,  and  put  knowledge 
within  the  reach  of  all,  have  been  called  narrow-minded, 
because  they  wrere  intolerant.  But  intolerant  of  what  1 
Of  what  they  believed  to  be  dangerous  nonsense,  which, 
if  left  free,  would  destroy  the  last  hope  of  civil  and  re 
ligious  freedom.  They  had  not  come  here  that  every 
man  might  do  that  which  seemed  good  in  his  own  eyes, 
but  in  the  sight  of  God.  Toleration,  moreover,  is  some 
thing  which  is  won,  not  granted.  It  is  the  equilibrium 
of  neutralized  forces.  The  Puritans  had  no  notion  of 
tolerating  mischief.  They  looked  upon  their  little  com 
monwealth  as  upon  their  own  private  estate  and  home 
stead,  as  they  had  a  right  to  do,  and  would  no  more 
allow  the  Devil's  religion  of  unreason  to  be  preached 
therein,  than  we  should  permit  a  prize-fight  in  our  gar- 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     243 

dens.  They  were  narrow ;  in  other  words  they  had  an 
edge  to  them,  as  men  that  serve  in  great  emergencies 
must ;  for  a  Gordian  knot  is  settled  sooner  with  a  sword 
than  a  beetle. 

The  founders  of  New  England  are  commonly  repre 
sented  in  the  after-dinner  oratory  of  their  descendants 
as  men  "  before  their  time,"  as  it  is  called ;  in  other 
words,  deliberately  prescient  of  events  resulting  from 
new  relations  of  circumstances,  or  even  from  circum 
stances  new  in  themselves,  and  therefore  altogether  alien 
from  their  own  experience.  Of  course,  such  a  class  of 
men  is  to  be  reckoned  among  those  non-existent  human 
varieties  so  gravely  catalogued  by  the  ancient  natural 
ists.  If  a  man  could  shape  his  action  with  reference  to 
what  should  happen  a  century  after  his  death,  surely  it 
might  be  asked  of  him  to  call  in  the  help  of  that  easier 
foreknowledge  which  reaches  from  one  day  to  the  next, 
—  a  power  of  prophecy  whereof  we  have  no  example.  I 
do  not  object  to  a  wholesome  pride  of  ancestry,  though  a 
little  mythical,  if  it  be  accompanied  with  the  feeling 
that  noblesse  oblige,  and  do  not  result  merely  in  a  placid 
self-satisfaction  with  our  own  mediocrity,  as  if  greatness, 
like  righteousness,  could  be  imputed.  We  can  pardon  it 
even  in  conquered  races,  like  the  Welsh  and  Irish,  who 
make  up  to  themselves  for  present  degradation  by  ima 
ginary  empires  in  the  past  whose  boundaries  they  can 
extend  at  will,  carrying  the  bloodless  conquests  of  fancy 
over  regions  laid  down  upon  no  map,  and  concerning 
which  authentic  history  is  enviously  dumb.  Those  long 
beadrolls  of  Keltic  kings  cannot  tyrannize  over  us,  and 
we  can  be  patient  so  long  as  our  own  crowns  are  un- 
cracked  by  the  shillalah  sceptres  of  their  actual  repre 
sentatives.  In  our  own  case,  it  would  not  be  amiss,  per 
haps,  if  we  took  warning  by  the  example  of  Teague 
and  Taffy.  At  least,  I  think  it  would  be  wise  in  our 


244          NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

orators  not  to  put  forward  so  prominently  the  claim  of 
the  Yankee  to  universal  dominion,  and  his  intention  to 
eoter  upon  it  forthwith.  If  we  do  our  duties  as  honest 
ly  and  as  much  in  the  fear  of  God  as  our  forefathers  did, 
we  need  not  trouble  ourselves  much  about  other  titles  to 
empire.  The  broad  foreheads  and  long  heads  will  win 
the  day  at  last  in  spite  of  all  heraldry,  and  it  will  be 
enough  if  we  feel  as  keenly  as  our  Puritan  founders  did 
that  those  organs  of  empire  may  be  broadened  and 
lengthened  by  culture.*  That  our  self-complacency 
should  not  increase  the  complacency  of  outsiders  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at.  As  we  sometimes  take  credit  to 
ourselves  (since  all  commendation  of  our  ancestry  is  in 
direct  self-flattery)  for  what  the  Puritans  fathers  never 
were,  so  there  are  others  who,  to  gratify  a  spite  against 
their  descendants,  blame  them  for  not  having  been  what 
they  could  not  be ;  namely,  before  their  time  in  such 
matters  as  slavery,  witchcraft,  and  the  like.  The  view, 
whether  of  friend  or  foe,  is  equally  unhistorical,  nay, 
without  the  faintest  notion  of  all  that  makes  history 
worth  having  as  a  teacher.  That  our  grandfathers 
shared  in  the  prejudices  of  their  day  is  all  that  makes 
them  human  to  us ;  and  that  nevertheless  they  could 
act  bravely  and  wisely  on  occasion  makes  them  only  the 
more  venerable.  If  certain  barbarisms  and  supersti 
tions  disappeared  earlier  in  New  England  than  else 
where,  not  by  the  decision  of  exceptionally  enlightened 
or  humane  judges,  but  by  force  of  public  opinion,  that 
is  the  fact  that  is  interesting  and  instructive  for  us.  I 
never  thought  it  an  abatement  of  Hawthorne's  genius  that 
he  came  lineally  from  one  who  sat  in  judgment  on  the 
witches  in  1692  ;  it  was  interesting  rather  to  trace  some- 

*  It  is  curious,  that,  when  Cromwell  proposed  to  transfer  a  colony 
from  New  England  to  Ireland,  one  of  the  conditions  insisted  on  in 
Massachusetts  was  that  a  college  should  be  established. 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTUKIES  AGO.     245 

thing  hereditary  in  the  sombre  character  of  his  imagina 
tion,  continually  vexing  itself  to  account  for  the  origin 
of  evil,  and  baffled  for  want  of  that  simple  solution  in  a 
personal  Devil. 

But  I  have  no  desire  to  discuss  the  merits  or  de 
merits  of  the  Puritans,  having  long  ago  learned  the  wis 
dom  of  saving  my  sympathy  for  more  modern  objects 
than  Hecuba.  My  object  is  to  direct  the  attention  of 
niy  readers  to  a  collection  of  documents  where  they  may 
see  those  worthies  as  they  were  in  their  daily  living  and 
thinking.  The  collections  of  our  various  historical  and 
antiquarian  societies  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  published 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  and  few  consequently  are 
aware  how  much  they  contain  of  interest  for  the  general 
reader  no  less  than  the  special  student.  The  several 
volumes  of  "  Winthrop  Papers,"  in  especial,  are  a  mine 
of  entertainment.  Here  we  have  the  Puritans  painted 
by  themselves,  and,  while  we  arrive  at  a  truer  notion  of 
the  characters  of  some  among  them,  and  may  according 
ly  sacrifice  to  that  dreadful  superstition  of  being  use 
fully  employed  which  makes  so  many  bores  and  bored, 
we  can  also  furtively  enjoy  the  oddities  of  thought  and 
speech,  the  humors  of  the  time,  which  our  local  histo 
rians  are  too  apt  to  despise  as  inconsidered  trifles.  For 
myself  I  confess  myself  heretic  to  the  established  the 
ory  of  the  gravity  of  history,  and  am  not  displeased 
with  an  opportunity  to  smile  behind  my  hand  at  any 
ludicrous  interruption  of  that  sometimes  wearisome  cere 
monial.  I  am  not  sure  that  I  would  not  sooner  give 
up  Raleigh  spreading  his  cloak  to  keep  the  royal  Dian's 
feet  from  the  mud,  than  that  awful  judgment  upon  the 
courtier  whose  Atlantcan  thighs  leaked  away  in  bran 
through  the  rent  in  his  trunk-hose.  The  painful  fact 
that  Fisher  had  his  head  cut  off  is  somewhat  mitigated 
to  me  by  the  circumstance  that  the  Pope  should  have 


246     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

sent  him,  of  all  things  in  the  world,  a  cardinal's  hat  after 
that  incapacitation.  Theology  herself  becomes  less  un- 
amiable  to  me  when  I  find  the  Supreme  Pontiff  writing 
to  the  Council  of  Trent  that  "they  should  begin  with 
original  sin,  maintaining  yet  a  due  respect  for  the  Em 
peror"  That  infallibility  should  thus  courtesy  to  de 
corum,  shall  make  me  think  better  of  it  while  I  live. 
I  shall  accordingly  endeavor  to  give  my  readers  what 
amusement  I  can,  leaving  it  to  themselves  to  extract 
solid  improvement  from  the  volumes  before  us,  which  in 
clude  a  part  of  the  correspondence  of  three  generations 
of  Winthrops. 

Let  me  premise  that  there  are  two  men  above  all 
others  for  whom  our  respect  is  heightened  by  these  let 
ters,  —  the  elder  John  Winthrop  and  Roger  Williams. 
Winthrop  appears  throughout  as  a  truly  magnanimous 
and  noble  man  in  an  unobtrusive  way,  —  a  kind  of  great 
ness  that  makes  less  noise  in  the  world,  but  is  on  the 
whole  more  solidly  satisfying  than  most  others,  —  a  man 
who  has  been  dipped  in  the  river  of  God  (a  surer  bap 
tism  than  Styx  or  dragon's  blood)  till  his  character  is  of 
perfect  proof,  and  who  appears  plainly  as  the  very  soul 
and  life  of  the  young  Colony.  Very  reverend  and  godly 
he  truly  was,  and  a  respect  not  merely  ceremonious,  but 
personal,  a  respect  that  savors  of  love,  shows  itself  in 
the  letters  addressed  to  him.  Charity  and  tolerance 
flow  so  naturally  from  the  pen  of  Williams  that  it  is 
plain  they  were  in  his  heart.  He  does  not  show  himself 
a  very  strong  or  very  wise  man,  but  a  thoroughly  gentle 
and  good  one.  His  affection  for  the  two  Winthrops  is 
evidently  of  the  warmest.  We  suspect  that  he  lived  to 
see  that  there  was  more  reason  in  the  drum-head  relig 
ious  discipline  which  made  him,  against  his  will,  the 
founder  of  a  commonwealth,  than  he  may  have  thought 
at  first.  But  for  the  fanaticism  (as  it  is  the  fashion  to 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     247 

call  the  sagacious  straitness)  of  the  abler  men  who  knew 
how  to  root  the  English  stock  firmly  in  this  new  soil  on 
either  side  of  him,  his  little  plantation  could  never  have 
existed,  and  he  himself  would  have  been  remembered 
only,  if  at  all,  as  one  of  the  jarring  atoms  in  a  chaos  of 
otherwise-mindedness. 

Two  other  men,  Emanuel  Downing  and  Hugh  Peter, 
leave  a  positively  unpleasant  savor  in  the  nostrils.  Each 
is  selfish  in  his  own  way,  —  Downing  with  the  shrewd 
ness  of  an  attorney,  Peter  with  that  clerical  unction  * 
which  in  a  vulgar  nature  so  easily  degenerates  into 
greasiness.  Neither  of  them  was  the  man  for  a  forlorn 
hope,  and  both  returned  to  England  when  the  civil  war 
opened  prospect  of  preferment  there.  Both,  we  suspect, 
were  inclined  to  value  their  Puritanism  for  its  rewards 
in  this  world  rather  than  the  next.  Downing's  son,  Sir 
George,  was  basely  prosperous,  making  the  good  cause 
pay  him  so  long  as  it  was  solvent,  and  then  selling  out 
in  season  to  betray  his  old  commander,  Colonel  Okey, 
to  the  'shambles  at  Charing  Cross.  Peter  became  a  colo 
nel  in  the  Parliament's  army,  and  under  the  Protecto 
rate  one  of  Cromwell's  chaplains.  On  his  trial,  after 
the  Restoration,  he  made  a  poor  figure,  in  striking  con 
trast  to  some  of  the  brave  men  who  suffered  with  him. 
At  his  execution  a  shocking  brutality  was  shown. 
"  When  Mr  Cook  was  cut  down  and  brought  to  be  quar 
tered,  one  they  called  Colonel  Turner  calling  to  the 
Sheriff's  men  to  bring  Mr  Peters  near,  that  he  might 
see  it ;  and  by  and  by  the  Hangman  came  to  him  all 
besmeared  in  blood,  and  rubbing  his  bloody  hands  to 
gether,  he  tauntingly  asked,  Come,  how  do  you  like  this, 
Mr.  Peters  ?  How  do  you  like  this  work  ?  "  *  This  Colo- 

*  State  Trials,  II.  409.  One  would  not  reckon  too  closely  with  a 
man  on  trial  for  his  life,  but  there  is  something  pitiful  in  Peter's  repre 
senting  himself  as  coming  back  to  England  "  out  of  the  West  Indias," 
in  order  to  evade  any  complicity  with  suspected  New  England. 


248    NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

nel  Turner  can  hardly  have  been  other  than  the  one 
who  four  years  later  came  to  the  hangman's  hands  for 
robbery ;  and  whose  behavior,  both  in  the  dock  and  at 
the  gallows,  makes  his  trial  one  of  the  most  entertain 
ing  as  a  display  of  character.  Peter  would  seem  to 
have  been  one  of  those  men  gifted  with  what  is  some 
times  called  eloquence ;  that  is,  the  faculty  of  stating 
things  powerfully  from  momentary  feeling,  and  not  from 
that  conviction  of  the  higher  reason  which  alone  can 
give  force  and  permanence  to  words.  His  letters  show 
him  subject,  like  others  of  like  temperament,  to  fits  of 
"  hypocondriacal  melancholy,"  and  the  only  witness  he 
called  on  his  trial  was  to  prove  that  he  was  confined  to 
his  lodgings  by  such  an  attack  on  the  day  of  the  king's 
beheading.  He  seems  to  have  been  subject  to  this  mal 
ady  at  convenience,  as  some  women  to  hysterics.  Hon 
est  John  Endicott  plainly  had  small  confidence  in  him, 
and  did  not  think  him  the  right  man  to  represent  the 
Colony  in  England.  There  is  a  droll  resolve  in  the 
Massachusetts  records  by  which  he  is  "  desired  to  write 
to  Holland  for  500/.  worth  of  peter,  &  401.  worth  of 
match."  It  is  with  a  match  that  we  find  him  burning 
his  fingers  in  the  present  correspondence. 

Peter  seems  to  have  entangled  himself  somehow  with 
a  Mrs.  Deliverance  Sheffield,  whether  maid  or  widow  no 
where  appears,  but  presumably  the  latter.  The  follow 
ing  statement  of  his  position  is  amusing  enough  :  "I 
have  sent  Mrs  D.  Sh.  letter,  which  puts  mee  to  new 
troubles,  for  though  shee  takes  liberty  upon  my  Cossen 
Downing's  speeches,  yet  (Good  Sir)  let  mee  not  be  a  foole 
in  Israel.  I  had  many  good  answers  to  yesterday's  worke 
[a  Fast]  and  amongst  the  rest  her  letter  ;  which  (if  her 
owne)  doth  argue  more  wisedome  than  I  thought  shee 
had.  You  have  often  sayd  I  could  not  leave  her ;  what 
to  doe  is  very  considerable.  Could  I  with  comfort  & 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     249 

credit  desist,  this  seemes  best :  could  I  goe  on  &  content 

myselfe,    that    were   good For   though    I    now 

seeme  free  agayne,  yet  the  depth  I  know  not.  Had 
shee  come  over  with  me,  I  thinke  I  had  bin  quieter. 
This  shee  may  know,  that  I  have  sought  God  earnestly, 
that  the  nexte  weeke  I  shall  bee  riper  :  —  I  doubt  shee 
gaynes  most  by  such  writings :  &  shee  deserves  most 
where  shee  is  further  of.  If  you  shall  amongst  you 
advise  mee  to  write  to  hir,  I  shall  forthwith  ;  our  towne 
lookes  upon  mee  contracted  &  so  I  have  sayd  myselfe ; 
what  wonder  the  charge  [change  ?]  would  make,  I  know 
not."  Again  :  "  Still  pardon  my  offensive  boldnes  :  I 
know  not  well  whither  Mrs  Sh.  have  set  mee  at  liberty 
or  not  :  my  conclusion  is,  that  if  you  find  I  cannot 
make  an  honorable  retreat,  then  I  shall  desire  to  ad 
vance  avv  0e&>.  Of  you  I  now  expect  your  last  advise, 
viz  :  whither  I  must  goe  on  or  of,  saluo  evangelij  honore : 
if  shee  bee  in  good  earnest  to  leave  all  agitations  this 
way,  then  I  stand  still  &  wayt  God's  mind  concerning 

mee If  I  had  much  mony  I  would  part  with  it 

to  her  free,  till  wee  heare  what  England  doth,  supposing 
I  may  bee  called  to  some  imployment  that  will  not  suit 
a  marryed  estate  "  :  (here  another  mode  of  escape  pre 
sents  itself,  and  he  goes  on  :)  "  for  indeed  (Sir)  some  must 
looke  out  &  I  have  very  strong  thoughts  to  speake  with  the 
Duitch  Governor  &  lay  some  way  there  for  a  supply  &c." 
At  the  end  of  the  letter,  an  objection  to  the  lady  herself 
occurs  to  him  :  "  Once  more  for  Mrs  Sh  :  I  had  from  Mr 
Hibbins  &  others,  her  fellowpassengers,  sad  discourage 
ments  where  they  saw  her  in  her  trim.  I  would  not 
come  of  with  dishonor,  nor  come  on  with  griefe,  or  omi 
nous  hesitations."  On  all  this  shilly-shally  we  have  a 
shrewd  comment  in  a  letter  of  Endicott :  "  I  cannot  but 
acquaint  you  with  my  thoughts  concerning  Mr  Peter 
since  hee  receaued  a  letter  from  Mrs  Sheffield,  which 
11* 


250     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

was  yesterday  in  the  eveninge  after  the  Fast,  shoe  seem 
ing  in  her  letter  to  abate  of  her  affeccions  towards  him 
&  dislikinge  to  come  to  Salem  vppon  such  termes  as  he 
had  written.  I  finde  now  that  hee  begins  to  play  her 
parte,  &  if  I  mistake  not,  you  will  see  him  as  greatly 
in  loue  with  her  (if  shee  will  but  hold  of  a  little)  as 
euer  shee  was  with  him ;  but  he  conceales  it  what  he 
can  as  yett.  The  begininge  of  the  next  weeke  you 
will  heare  further  from  him."  The  widow  was  evidently 
more  than  a  match  for  poor  Peter. 

It  should  appear  that  a  part  of  his  trouble  arose  from 
his  having  coquetted  also  with  a  certain  Mrs.  Ruth, 
about  whom  he  was  "  dealt  with  by  Mrs  Amee,  Mr 
Phillips  &  2  more  of  the  Church,  our  Elder  being  one. 
When  Mr  Phillips  with  much  violence  &  sharpnes 
charged  mee  home  ....  that  I  should  hinder  the 
mayd  of  a  match  at  London,  which  was  npt  so,  could 
not  thinke  of  any  kindnes  I  euer  did  her,  though  shee 
haue  had  above  300^'.  through  my  fingers,  so  as  if  God 
uphold  me  not  after  an  especiall  manner,  it  will  sinke  me 
surely  ....  hee  told  me  he  would  not  stop  my  in 
tended  marriage,  but  assured  mee  it  would  not  bee 
good  ....  all  which  makes  mee  reflect  upon  my  rash 
proceedings  with  Mrs  Sh."  Panurge's  doubts  and  dif 
ficulties  about  matrimony  were  not  more  entertainingly 
contradictory.  Of  course,  Peter  ends  by  marrying  the 
widow,  and  presently  we  have  a  comment  on  "  her  trim." 
In  January,  1639,  he  writes  to  Winthrop  :  "My  wife 
is  very  thankfull  for  her  apples,  &  desires  much  the  new 
fashioned  shooes"  Eight  years  later  we  find  him  writ 
ing  from  England,  where  he  had  been  two  years  :  "  I  am 
coming  over  if  I  must ;  my  wife  comes  of  necessity  to 
New  England,  having  run  her  selfe  out  of  breath  here  " ; 
and  then  in  the  postscript,  "  bee  sure  you  never  let  my 
wife  come  away  from  thence  without  my  leave,  &  then 


NEW  ENGLAKD  TWO  CENTUKIES  AGO.     251 

you  love  mee."  But  life  is  never  pure  comedy,  and  the 
end  in  this  case  is  tragical.  Roger  Williams,  after  his 
return  from  England  in  1654,  writes  to  John  Win- 
throp,  Jr.  :  "  Your  brother  flourisheth  in  good  esteeme 
&  is  eminent  for  maintaining  the  Freedome  of  the  Con 
science  as  to  matters  of  Beliefe,  Religion,  &  Worship. 
Your  Father  Peters  preacheth  the  same  Doctrine  though 
not  so  zealously  as  some  years  since,  yet  cries  out  against 
New  English  Rigidities  &  Persecutions,  their  civil  in 
juries  &  wrongs  to  himselfe,  &  their  unchristian  dealing 
with  him  in  excommunicating  his  distracted  wife.  All 
this  he  tould  me  in  his  lodgings  at  Whitehall,  those 
lodgings  which  I  was  tould  were  Canterburies  [the  Arch 
bishop],  but  he  himselfe  tould  me  that  that  Library 
wherein  we  were  together  was  Canterburies  &  given  him 
by  the  Parliament.  His  wife  lives  from  him,  not  wholy  but 
much  distracted.  He  tells  me  he  had  but  200  a  yeare  & 
he  allowed  her  4  score  per  annum  of  it.  Surely,  Sir,  the 
most  holy  Lord  is  most  wise  in  all  the  trialls  he  exercis- 
eth  his  people  with.  He  tould  me  that  his  affliction 
from  his  wife  stird  him  up  to  Action  abroad,  &  when 
successe  tempted  him  to  Pride,  the  Bitternes  in  his 
bozome-comforts  was  a  Cooler  &  a  Bridle  to  him."  Tru 
ly  the  whirligig  of  time  brings  about  strange  revenges. 
Peter  had  been  driven  from  England  by  the  persecu 
tions  of  Laud  ;  a  few  years  later  he  "  stood  armed  on 
the  scaffold  "  when  that  prelate  was  beheaded,  and  now 
we  find  him  installed  in  the  archiepiscopal  lodgings. 
Dr.  Palfrey,  it  appears  to  me,  gives  altogether  too  favor 
able  an  opinion  both  of  Peter's  character  and  abilities. 
I  conceive  him  to  have  been  a  vain  and  selfish  man. 
He  may  have  had  the  bravery  of  passionate  impulse,  but 
he  wanted  that  steady  courage  of  character  which  has  such 
a  beautiful  constancy  in  Winthrop.  He  always  professed 
a  longing  to  come  back  to  New  England,  but  it  was  only 


252     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

a  way  he  had  of  talking.  That  he  never  meant  to  come 
is  plain  from  these  letters.  Nay,  when  things  looked 
prosperous  in  England,  he  writes  to  the  younger  Win- 
throp  :  "  My  counsell  is  you  should  come  hither  with 
your  family  for  certaynly  you  will  bee  capable  of  a  com 
fortable  living  in  this  free  Commonwealth.  I  doo  seri 
ously  advise  it G.  Downing  is  worth  500/.  per 

annum  but  4:1.  per  diem  —  your  brother  Stephen  worth 
2000/.  &  a  maior.  I  pray  come."  But  when  he  is 
snugly  ensconced  in  Whitehall,  and  may  be  presumed 
to  have  some  influence  with  the  prevailing  powers,  his 
zeal  cools.  "  I  wish  you  &  all  friends  to  stay  there  & 
rather  looke  to  the  West  Indyes  if  they  remoue,  for 
many  are  here  to  seeke  when  they  come  ouer."  To  me 
Peter's  highest  promotion  seems  to  have  been  that  he 
walked  with  John  Milton  at  the  Protector's  funeral.  He 
was,  I  suspect,  one  of  those  men,  to  borrow  a  charita 
ble  phrase  of  Roger  Williams,  who  "  feared  God  in  the 
main,"  that  is,  whenever  it  was  not  personally  incon 
venient.  William  Coddington  saw  him  in  his  glory  in 
1G51  :  "  Soe  wee  toucke  the  tyrne  to  goe  to  viset  Mr 
Petters  at  his  chamber.  I  was  mery  with  him  &  called 
him  the  Arch  Bp  :  of  Canterberye,  in  regard  to  his  ad- 
tendance  by  ministers  &  gentlemen,  &  it  passed  very 
well."  Considering  certain  charges  brought  against  Pe 
ter,  (though  he  is  said,  when  under  sentence  of  death, 
to  have  denied  the  truth  of  them,)  Coddington's  state 
ment  that  he  liked  to  have  "  gentlewomen  waite  of 
him  "  in  his  lodgings  has  not  a  pleasant  look.  One  last 
report  of  him  we  get  (September,  1G59)  in  a  letter  of 
John  Davenport,  —  "  that  Mr  Hugh  Peters  is  distracted 
&  under  sore  horrors  of  conscience,  crying  out  of  him- 
selfe  as  damned  £  confessing  haynous  actings." 

Occasionally  these  letters  give  us  interesting  glimpses 
of  persons  and  things  in  England.     In  the  letter  of  Wil- 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     253 

liams  just  cited,  there  is  a  lesson  for  all  parties  raised  to 
power  by  exceptional  causes.  "  Surely,  Sir,  youre  Fa 
ther  &  all  the  people  of  God  in  England  ....  are  now 
in  the  sadle  &  at  the  helme,  so  high  that  non  datus 
descensus  nisi  cadendo  :  Some  cheere  up  their  spirits  with 
the  impossibilitie  of  another  fall  or  turne,  so  doth  Major 
G.  Harrison  ....  a  very  gallant  most  deserving  heav 
enly  man,  but  most  highflowne  for  the  Kingdom  of  the 
Saints  &  the  5th  Monarchic  now  risen  &  their  sun  never 
to  set  againe  &c.  Others,  as,  to  my  knowledge,  the  Pro 
tector  ....  are  not  so  full  of  that  faith  of  miracles, 
but  still  imagine  changes  &  persecutions  &  the  very 
slaughter  of  the  witnesses  before  that  glorious  morning 
so  much  desired  of  a  worldly  Kingdome,  if  ever  such  a 
King-dome  (as  literally  it  is  by  so  many  expounded)  be 
to  arise  in  this  present  world  &  dispensation."  Poor 
General  Harrison  lived  to  be  one  of  the  witnesses  so 
slaughtered.  The  practical  good  sense  of  Cromwell  is 
worth  noting,  the  English  understanding  struggling 
against  Judaic  trammels.  Williams  gives  us  another 
peep  through  the  keyhole  of  the  past  :  "  It  pleased  the 
Lord  to  call  me  for  some  time  &  with  some  persons  to 
practice  the  Hebrew,  the  Greeke,  Latine,  French  & 
Dutch.  The  secretarie  of  the  Councell  (Mr  Milton)  for 
my  Dutch  I  read  him,  read  me  many  more  languages. 
Grammar  rules  begin  to  be  esteemed  a  Tyrannic.  I 
taught  2  young  Gentlemen,  a  Parliament  man's  sons,  as 
we  teach  our  children  English,  by  words,  phrazes,  & 
constant  talke,  &c."  It  is  plain  that  Milton  had  talked 
over  with  Williams  the  theory  put  forth  in  his  tract  on 
Education,  and  made  a  convert  of  him.  We  could  wish 
that  the  good  Baptist  had  gone  a  little  more  into  par 
ticulars.  But  which  of  us  knows  among  the  men  he 
meets  whom  time  will  dignify  by  curtailing  him  of  the 
"  Mr.,"  and  reducing  him  to  a  bare  patronymic,  as  being 


25-i     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

a  kind  by  himself  1  We  have  a  glance  or  two  at  Oliver, 
who  is  always  interesting.  "  The  late  renowned  Oliver 
confest  to  me  in  close  discourse  about  the  Protestants 
affaires  &c  that  he  yet  feard  great  persecutions  to  the 
protestants  from  the  Romanists  before  the  downfall  of 
the  Papacie,"  writes  Williams  in  1660.  This  "close 
discourse  "  must  have  been  six  years  before,  when  Wil 
liams  was  in  England.  Within  a  year  after,  Oliver  inter 
fered  to  some  purpose  in  behalf  of  the  Protestants  of 
Piedmont,  and  Mr.  Milton  wrote  his  famous  sonnet.  Of 
the  war  with  Spain,  Williams  reports  from  his  letters  out 
of  England  in  1656  :  "  This  diversion  against  the  Span 
iard  hath  turnd  the  face  &  thoughts  of  many  English,  so 
that  the  saying  now  is,  Crowne  the  Protector  with  gould,* 
though  the  sullen  yet  cry,  Crowne  him  with  thornes." 

Again  in  1654:  "  I  know  the  Protector  had  strong 
thoughts  of  Hispaniola  &  Cuba.  Mr  Cotton's  interpret 
ing  of  Euphrates  to  be  the  West  Indies,  the  supply  of 
gold  (to  take  off  taxes),  &  the  provision  of  a  warmer 
diverticulum  &  receptaculum  then  N.  England  is,  will 
make  a  footing  into  those  parts  very  precious,  &  if  it 
shall  please  God  to  vouchsafe  successe  to  this  fleete,  I 
looke  to  hear  of  an  invitation  at  least  to  these  parts  for 
removall  from  his  Highnes  who  lookes  on  N.  E.  only  with 
an  eye  of  pitie,  as  poore,  cold  &  useless."  The  mixture 
of  Euphrates  and  taxes,  of  the  transcendental  and  prac 
tical,  prophecy  taking  precedence  of  thrift,  is  character 
istic,  and  recalls  Cromwell's  famous  rule,  of  fearing  God 
and  keeping  your  powder  dry.  In  one  of  the  Protector's 
speeches,!  he  insists  much  on  his  wish  to  retire  to  a  pri 
vate  life.  There  is  a  curious  confirmation  of  his  sincerity 
in  a  letter  of  William  Hooke,  then  belonging  to  his 

*  Waller  put  this  into  verse  :  — 

"  Let  the  rich  ore  forthwith  be  melted  down 

And  the  state  fixed  by  making  him  a  crown." 
f  The  third  in  Carlyle,  1654. 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTUEIES  AGO.     255 

household,  dated  the  13th  of  April,  1657.  The  question 
of  the  kingly  title  was  then  under  debate,  and  Hooke's 
account  of  the  matter  helps  to  a  clearer  understanding 
of  the  reasons  for  Cromwell's  refusing  the  title  :  "  The 
protector  is  urged  utrinque  &  (I  am  ready  to  think)  will 
ing  enough  to  betake  himself  to  a  private  life,  if  it 
might  be.  He  is  a  godly  man,  much  in  prayer  &  good 
discourses,  delighting  in  good  men  &  good  ministers, 
self-denying  &  ready  to  promote  any  good  worl^  for 
Christ."  *  On  the  5th  of  February,  1654,  Captain  John 
Mason,  -of  Pequot  memory,  writes  "  a  word  or  twoe  of 
newes  as  it  comes  from  Mr  Eaton,  viz  :  that  the  Parlia 
ment  sate  in  September  last  ;  they  chose  their  old 
Speaker  &  Clarke.  The  Protectour  told  them  they  were 
a  free  Parliament,  &  soe  left  them  that  day.  They, 
considering  where  the  legislative  power  resided,  con 
cluded  to  vote  it  on  the  morrow,  &  to  take  charge  of  the 
militia.  The  Protectour  hereing  of  it,  sent  for  some 
numbers  of  horse,  went  to  the  Parliament  House,  nayld 
up  the  doores,  sent  for  them  to  the  Painted  Chamber, 
told  them  they  should  attend  the  lawes  established,  & 
that  he  would  wallow  in  his  blood  before  he  would  part 
with  what  was  conferd  upon  him,  tendering  them  an 
oath  :  140  engaged."  Now  it  is  curious  that  Mr.  Eaton 
himself,  from  whom  Mason  got  his  news,  wrote,  only 
two  days  before,  an  account,  differing,  in  some  particulars, 
and  especially  in  tone,  from  Mason's.  Of  the  speech  he 
says,  that  it  "gave  such  satisfaction  that  about  200 
have  since  ingaged  to  owne  the  present  Government." 
Yet  Carlyle  gives  the  same  number  of  signers  (140)  as 
Mason,  and  there  is  a  sentence  in  Cromwell's  speech,  as 
reported  by  Carlyle,  of  precisely  the  same  purport  as 
that  quoted  by  Mason.  To  me,  that  "  wallow  in  my 
blood  "  has  rather  more  of  the  Cromwellian  ring  in  it, 

*  Collections,  Third  Scries,  Vol.  I.  p.  182. 


256  NEW  ENGLAND   TWO   CENTUEIES  AGO. 

more  of  the  quality  of  spontaneous  speech,  than  the 
"  rolled  into  my  grave  and  buried  with  infamy  "  of  the 
official  reporter.  John  Haynes  (24th  July,  1G53)  re 
ports  "  newes  from  England  of  astonishing  nature,"  con 
cerning  the  dissolution  of  the  Rump.  We  quote  his 
story  both  as  a  contemporaneous  version  of  the  event, 
and  as  containing  some  particulars  that  explain  the 
causes  that  led  to  it.  It  differs,  in  some  respects, 
from  Carlyle,  and  is  hardly  less  vivid  as  a  picture  : 
"  The  Parliament  of  England  &  Councell  of  State  are 
both  dissolved,  by  whom  &  the  manner  this  :  The  Lord 
Cromwell,  Generall,  went  to  the  house  &  asked  the 
Speaker  &  Bradshaw  by  what  power  they  sate  ther. 
They  answered  by  the  same  power  that  he  woare  his 
sword.  Hee  replied  they  should  know  they  did  not,  & 
said  they  should  sitt  noe  longer,  demanding  an  account 
of  the  vast  sommes  of  money  they  had  received  of  the 
Commons.  They  said  the  matter  was  of  great  conse 
quence  &  they  would  give  him  accompt  in  tenn  dayes.  He 
said,  Noe,  they  had  sate  too  long  already  (&  might  now 
take  their  ease,)  for  ther  inriching  themselves  &  impov 
erishing  the  Commons,  &  then  seazed  uppon  all  the 
Records.  Immediatly  Lambert,  Livetenant  Generall,  & 
Hareson  Maior  Generall  (for  they  two  were  with  him), 
tooke  the  Speaker  Lenthall  by  the  hands,  lift  him  out 
of  the  Chaire,  &  ledd  him  out  of  the  house,  &  com 
manded  the  rest  to  depart,  which  fortwith  was  obeied,  & 
the  Generall  tooke  the  keyes  &  locked  the  doore."  He 
then  goes  on  to  give  the  reasons  assigned  by  different 
persons  for  the  act.  Some  said  that  the  General 
"  scented  their  purpose  "  to  declare  themselves  perpet 
ual,  and  to  get  rid  of  him  by  ordering  him  to  Scotland. 
"  Others  say  this,  that  the  cries  of  the  oppressed  pre- 
veiled  much  with  him  ....  &  hastned  the  declaracion 
of  that  ould  principle,  Salus  populi  suprema  lex  &c." 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.  257 

The  General,  in  the  heat  of  his  wrath,  himself  snatching 
the  keys  and  locking  the  door,  has  a  look  of  being  drawn 
from  the  life.  Cromwell,  in  a  letter  to  General  Fortescue 
(November,  1655),  speaks  sharply  of  the  disorders  and 
debauchedness,  profaneness  and  wickedness,  commonly 
practised  amongst  the  army  sent  out  to  the  West  Indies. 
Major  Mason  gives  us  a  specimen  :  "  It  is  heere  reported 
that  some  of  the  soldiers  belonging  to  the  meet  at  Bos 
ton,  ffell  upon  the  watch  :  after  some  bickering  they 
comanded  them  to  goe  before  the  Governour ;  they  re- 
torned  that  they  were  Cromwell's  boyes."  Have  we  not, 
in  these  days,  heard  of  "  Sherman's  boys  "  $ 

Belonging  properly  to  the  "  Winthrop  Papers,"  but 
printed  in  an  earlier  volume  (Third  Series,  Vol.  I.  pp. 
185  -  198),  is  a  letter  of  John  Maidstone,  which  contains 
the  best  summary  of  the  Civil  War  that  I  ever  read. 
Indeed,  it  gives  a  clearer  insight  into  its  causes,  and  a 
better  view  of  the  vicissitudes  of  the  Commonwealth 
and  Protectorate,  than  any  one  of  the  more  elaborate 
histories.  There  is  a  singular  equity  and  absence  of 
party  passion  in  it  which  gives  us  faith  in  the  author's 
judgment.  He  was  Oliver's  Steward  of  the  Household, 
and  his  portrait  of  him,  as  that  of  an  eminently  fair- 
minded  man  who  knew  him  well,  is  of  great  value. 
Carlyle  has  not  copied  it,  and,  as  many  of  my  readers 
may  never  have  seen  it,  I  reproduce  it  here  :  "  Before 
I  pass  further,  pardon  me  in  troubling  you  with  the 
character  of  his  person,  which,  by  reason  of  my  near 
ness  to  him,  I  had  opportunity  well  to  observe.  His 
body  was  well  compact  and  strong ;  his  stature  under 
six  feet,  (I  believe  about  two  inches  ;)  his  head  so  shaped 
as  you  might  see  it  a  store-house  and  shop  both,  of  a 
vast  treasury  of  natural  parts.  His  temper  exceeding 
fiery,  as  I  have  known,  but  the  flame  of  it  kept  down 
for  the  most  part  or 'soon  allayed  with  those  moral  en- 

Q 


258    NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

dowments  he  had.  He  was  naturally  compassionate  to 
wards  objects  in  distress,  even  to  an  effeminate  measure  ; 
though  God  had  made  him  a  heart  wherein  was  left  little 
room  for  any  fear  but  what  was  due  to  himself,  of  which 
there  was  a  large  proportion,  yet  did  he  exceed  in  ten 
derness  toward  sufferers.  A  larger  soul,  I  think,  hath 
seldom  dwelt  in  a  house  of  clay  than  his  was.  I  do  be 
lieve,  if  his  story  were  impartially  transmitted,  and  the 
unprejudiced  world  well  possessed  with  it,  she  would  add 
him  to  her  nine  worthies  and  make  that  number  a 
decemviri.  He  lived  and  died  in  comfortable  communion 
with  God,  as  judicious  persons  near  him  well  observed. 
He  was  that  Mordecai  that  sought  the  welfare  of  his 
people  and  spake  peace  to  his  seed.  Yet  were  his  temp 
tations  such,  as  it  appeared  frequently  that  he  that  hath 
grace  enough  for  many  men  may  have  too  little  for  him 
self,  the  treasure  he  had  being  but  in  an  earthen  vessel 
and  that  equally  denied  with  original  sin  as  any  other 
man's  nature  is."  There  are  phrases  here  that  may  be 
matched  with  the  choicest  in  the  life  of  Agricola  ;  and, 
indeed,  the  whole  letter,  superior  to  Tacitus  in  judicial 
fairness  of  tone,  goes  abreast  of  his  best  writing  in  con 
densation,  nay,  surpasses  it  in  this,  that,  while  in  Taci 
tus  the  intensity  is  of  temper,  here  it  is  the  clear  resid 
uum  left  by  the  ferment  and  settling  of  thought.  Just 
before,  speaking  of  the  dissolution  of  Oliver's  last  Par 
liament,  Maidstone  says  :  "  That  was  the  last  which  sat 
during  his  life,  he  being  compelled  to  wrestle  with  the 
difficulties  of  his  place  so  well  as  he  could  without  par 
liamentary  assistance,  and  in  it  met  with  so  great  a 
burthen  as  (I  doubt  not  to  say)  it  drank  up  his  spirits, 
of  which  his  natural  constitution  yielded  a  vast  stock, 
and  brought  him  to  his  grave,  his  interment  being  the 
seed-time  of  his  glory  and  England's  calamity."  Hooke, 
in  a  letter  of  April  16,  1658,  has  a  passage  worth  quot- 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     259 

ing  :  "  The  dissolution  of  the  last  Parliament  puts  the 
supreme  powers  upon  difficulties,  though  the  trueth  is 
the  Nacion  is  so  ill  spirited  that  little  good  is  to  be  ex 
pected  from  these  Generall  Assemblies.  They  [the  su 
preme  powers,  to  wit,  Cromwell]  have  been  much  in 
Counsell  since  this  disappointment,  &  God  hath  been 
sought  by  them  in  the  effectuall  sense  of  the  need  of 
help  from  heaven  &  of  the  extreme  danger  impendent 
on  a  miscarriage  of  their  advises.  But  our  expences  are 
so  vast  that  I  know  not  how  they  can  avoyde  a  recur 
rence  to  another  Session  &  to  make  a  further  tryall. 
....  The  land  is  full  of  discontents,  &  the  Cavaleerish 
party  doth  still  expect  a  day  <fe  nourish  hopes  of  a  Revo 
lution.  The  Quakers  do  still  proceed  &  are  not  yet 
come  to  their  period.  The  Presbyterians  do  abound,  I 
thinke,  more  than  ever,  &  are  very  bold  &  confident 
because  some  of  their  masterpieces  lye  unanswered, 
particularly  theire  Jus  Divinum  Regiminis  Ecclesiastic* 
which  I  have  sent  to  Mr.  Davenporte.  It  hath  been  ex 
tant  without  answer  these  many  years  [only  four,  brother 
Hooke,  if  we  may  trust  the  title-page].  The  Anabap 
tists  abound  likewise,  &  Mr  Tombes  hath  pretended  to 
have  answered  all  the  bookes  extant  against  his  opinion. 
I  saw  him  presenting  it  to  the  Protectour  of  late.  The 
Episcopall  men  ply  the  Common-Prayer  booke  with 
much  more  boldness  then  ever  since  these  turnes  of 
things,  even  in  the  open  face  of  the  City  in  severall 
places.  I  have  spoken  of  it  to  the  Protectour  but  as 
yet  nothing  is  done  in  order  to  their  being  suppressed." 
It  should  teach  us  to  distrust  the  apparent  size  of  ob 
jects,  which  is  a  mere  cheat  of  their  nearness  to  us,  that 
we  are  so  often  reminded  of  how  small  account  things 
seem  to  one  generation  for  which  another  was  ready  to 
die.  A  copy  of  the  Jus  Divinum  held  too  close  to  the 
eyes  could  shut  out  the  universe  with  its  infinite 


2GO    NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

chances  and  changes,  its  splendid  indifference  to  our 
ephemeral  fates.  Cromwell,  we  should  gather,  had 
found  out  the  secret  of  this  historical  perspective,  to  dis 
tinguish  between  the  blaze  of  a  burning  tar-barrel  and 
the  final  conflagration  of  all  things.  He  had  learned 
tolerance  by  the  possession  of  power,  —  a  proof  of  his 
capacity  for  rule.  In  1652  Haynes  writes  :  "  Ther  was 
a  Catechise  lately  in  print  ther,  that  denied  the  divinity 
of  Christ,  yett  ther  was  motions  in  the  house  by  some, 
to  have  it  lycenced  by  authority.  Cromwell  mainly 
oposed,  &  at  last  it  was  voted  to  bee  burnt  which  causes 
much  discontent  of  somme."  Six  years  had  made 
Cromwell  wiser. 

One  more  extract  from  a  letter  of  Hooke's  (30th 
March,  1G59)  is  worth  giving.  After  speaking  of  Oli 
ver's  death,  he  goes  on  to  say :  "  Many  prayers  were 
put  up  solemnly  for  his  life,  &  some,  of  great  &  good 

note,  were  too  confident  that  he  would  not  die I 

suppose  himselfe  had  thoughts  that  he  should  have 
outlived  this  sickness  till  near  his  dissolution,  perhaps  a 
day  or  two  before ;  which  I  collect  partly  by  some 
words  which  he  was  said  to  speak  ....  &  partly  from 
his  delaying,  almost  to  the  last,  to  nominate  his  succes 
sor,  to  the  wonderment  of  many  who  began  sooner  to 

despair  of  his  life His  eldest  son  succeedeth  him, 

being  chosen  by  the  Council,  the  day  following  his 
father's  death,  whereof  he  had  no  expectation.  I  have 
heard  him  say  he  had  thought  to  have  lived  as  a  country 
gentleman,  &  that  his  father  had  not  employed  him  in 
such  a  way  as  to  prepare  him  for  such  employment ; 
which,  he  thought,  he  did  designedly.  I  suppose  his 
meaning  was  lest  it  should  have  been  apprehended  he 
had  prepared  &  appointed  him  for  such  a  place,  the  bur 
then  whereof  I  have  several  times  heard  him  complain 
ing  under  since  his  coming  to  the  Government,  the 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTUEIES  AGO.     261 

weighty  occasions  whereof  with  continuall  oppressing 
cares  had  drunk  up  his  father's  spirits,  in  whose  body 
very  little  blood  was  found  when  he  was  opened  :  the 
greatest  defect  visible  was  in  his  heart,  which  was  flac 
cid  &  shrunk  together.  Yet  he  was  one  that  could  bear 
much  without  complaining,  as  one  of  a  strong  constitution 
of  brain  (as  appeared  when  he  was  dissected)  &  likewise 
of  body.  His  son  seemeth  to  be  of  another  frame,  soft 
&  tender,  &  penetrable  with  easier  cares  by  much,  yet 
he  is  of  a  sweete  countenance,  vivacious  &  candid,  as  is 
the  whole  frame  of  his  spirit,  only  naturally  inclined  to 
choler.  His  reception  of  multitudes  of  addresses  from 
towns,  cities,  &  counties  doth  declare,  among  several 
other  indiciums,  more  of  ability  in  him  than  could,  ordi 
narily,  have  been  expected  from  him.  He  spake  also 
with  general  acceptation  &  applause  when  he  made  his 
speech  before  the  Parliament,  even  far  beyond  the  Lord 
Fynes.*  ....  If  this  Assembly  miss  it,  we  are  like  to 
be  in  an  ill  condition.  The  old  ways  &  customs  of  Eng 
land,  as  to  worshipe,  are  in  the  hearts  of  the  most,  who 

long  to  see  the  days  again  which  once  they  saw 

The  hearts  of  very  many  are  for  the  house  of  the  Stew 
arts,  &  there  is  a  speech  as  if  they  would  attempt  to 

call  the  late  King's  judges  into  question The 

city,  I  hear  is  full  of  Cavaliers."  Poor  Richard  appears 
to  have  inherited  little  of  his  father  but  the  inclination 
to  choler.  That  he  could  speak  far  beyond  the  Lord 
Fynes  seems  to  have  been  not  much  to  the  purpose. 
Rhetoric  was  not  precisely  the  medicine  for  such  a  case 
as  he  had  to  deal  with.  Such  were  the  glimpses  which 
the  New  England  had  of  the  Old.  Ishmael  must  ere 
long  learn  to  shift  for  himself. 

The  temperance  question  agitated  the   fathers  very 
much  as  it  still  does  the  children.     We  have  never  seen 

*  This  speech  may  be  found  in  the  Annual  Register  of  1762. 


262     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

the  anti-prohibition  argument  stated  more  cogently  than 
in  a  letter  of  Thomas  Shepard,  minister  of  Cambridge, 
to  Winthrop,  in  1639  :  "  This  also  I  doe  humbly  intreat, 
that  there  may  be  no  sin  made  of  drinking  in  any  case 
one  to  another,  for  I  am  confident  he  that  stands  here 
will  fall  &  be  beat  from  his  grounds  by  his  own  argu 
ments  ;  as  also  that  the  consequences  will  be  very  sad, 
and  the  thing  provoking  to  God  &  man  to  make  more 
sins  than  (as  yet  is  seene)  God  himself  hath  made."  A 
principle  as  wise  now  as  it  was  then.  Our  ancestors 
were  also  harassed  as  much  as  we  by  the  difficulties  of 
domestic  service.  In  a  country  where  land  might  be 
had  for  the  asking,  it  was  not  easy  to  keep  hold  of  ser 
vants  brought  over  from  England.  Emanuel  Downing, 
always  the  hard,  practical  man,  would  find  a  remedy  in 
negro  slavery.  "  A  warr  with  the  Narraganset,"  he 
writes  to  Winthrop  in  1645,  "is  verie  considerable  to 
this  plantation,  ffor  I  doubt  whither  it  be  not  synne 
in  us,  having  power  in  our  hands,  to  suffer  them  to 
maynteyne  the  worship  of  the  devill  which  their  paw- 
wawes  often  doe ;  21ie,  If  upon  a  just  warre  the  Lord 
should  deliver  them  into  our  hands,  wee  might  easily 
have  men,  woemen,  &  children  enough  to  exchange 
for  Moores,  which  wilbe  more  gaynefull  pilladge  for  us 
than  wee  conceive,  for  I  doe  not  see  how  wee  can  thrive 
untill  wee  gett  into  a  stock  of  slaves  sufficient  to  doe  all 
our  buisenes,  for  our  childrens  children  will  hardly  see 
this  great  Continent  filled  with  people,  soe  that  our  ser 
vants  will  still  desire  freedome  to  plant  for  them  selves, 
&  not  stay  but  for  verie  great  wages.  And  I  suppose 
you  know  verie  well  how  wee  shall  maynteyne  20  Moores 
cheaper  than  one  Englishe  servant."  The  doubt  wheth 
er  it  be  not  sin  in  us  longer  to  tolerate  their  devil-wor 
ship,  considering  how  much  need  we  have  of  them  as 
merchandise,  is  delicious.  The  way  in  which  Hugh  Pe- 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTUEIES  AGO.    263 

ter  grades  the  sharp  descent  from  the  apostolic  to  the 
practical  with  an  et  cetera,  in  the  following  extract,  has 
the  same  charm :  "  Sir,  Mr  Endecot  &  myself  salute 
you  in  the  Lord  Jesus  &c.  Wee  have  heard  of  a  divi- 
dence  of  women  &  children  in  the  bay  &  would  bee  glad 
of  a  share  viz  :  a  young  woman  or  girle  &  a  boy  if  you 
thinke  good."  Peter  seems  to  have  got  what  he  asked 
for,  and  to  have  been  worse  off  than  before  \  for  we  find 
him  writing  two  years  later :  "  My  wife  desires  my 
daughter  to  send  to  Hanna  that  was  her  mayd,  now  at 
Charltowne,  to  know  if  shee  would  dwell  with  us,  for 
truly  wee  are  so  destitute  (having  now  but  an  Indian) 
that  wee  know  not  what  to  doe."  Let  any  housewife  of 
our  day,  who  does  not  find  the  Keltic  element  in  domestic 
life  so  refreshing  as  to  Mr.  Arnold  in  literature,  imagine 
a  household  with  one  wild  Pequot  woman,  communi 
cated  with  by  signs,  for  its  maid  of  all  work,  and  take 
courage.  Those  were  serious  times  indeed,  when  your 
cook  might  give  warning  by  taking  your  scalp,  or  chignon,  • 
as  the  case  might  be,  and  making  off  with  it  into  the 
woods.  The  fewness  and  dearness.  of  servants  made  it 
necessary  to  call  in  temporary  assistance  for  extraordi 
nary  occasions,  and  hence  arose  the  common  use  of  the 
word  help.  As  the  great  majority  kept  no  servants  at 
all,  and  yet  were  liable  to  need  them  for  work  to  which 
the  family  did  not  suffice,  as,  for  instance,  in  harvest, 
the  use  of  the  word  was  naturally  extended  to  all  kinds 
of  service.  That  it  did  not  have  its  origin  in  any  false 
shame  at  the  condition  itself,  induced  by  democratic 
habits,  is  plain  from  the  fact  that  it  came  into  use  while 
the  word  servant  had  a  much  wider  application  than  now, 
and  certainly  implied  no  social  stigma.  Downing  and 
Hooke,  each  at  different  times,  one  of  them  so  late  as 
1GG7,  wished  to  place  a  son  as  " servant"  with  one  of 
the  Winthrops.  Roger  Williams  writes  of  his  daughter, 


264    NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTUEIES  AGO. 

that  "  she  desires  to  spend  some  time  in  service  &  liked 
much  Mrs  Brenton,  who  wanted."  This  was,  no  doubt, 
in  order  to  be  well  drilled  in  housekeeping,  an  example 
which  might  be  followed  still  to  advantage.  John  Tink 
er,  himself  the  "  servant "  or  steward  of  the  second 
Winthrop,  makes  use  of  help  in  both  the  senses  we  have 
mentioned,  and  shows  the  transition  of  the  word  from 
its  restricted  to  its  more  general  application.  "  We 
have  fallen  a  pretty  deal  of  timber  &  drawn  some  by 
Goodman  Rogers's  team,  but  unless  your  worship  have 
a  good  team  of  your  own  &  a  man  to  go  with  them,  I 
shall  be  much  distracted  for  help  ....  &  when  our 
business  is  most  in  haste  we  shall  be  most  to  seek." 
Again,  writing  at  harvest,  as  appears  both  by  the  date  and 
by  an  elaborate  pun,  —  "I  received  the  sithes  you  sent 
but  in  that  there  came  not  also  yourself,  it  maketh  mo 
to  sigth"  —  he  says  :  "  Help  is  scarce  and  hard  to  get, 
difficult  to  please,  uncertain,  &c.  Means  runneth  out  & 
wages  on  &  I  cannot  make  choice  of  my  help" 

It  may  be  some  consolation  to  know  that  the  com 
plaint  of  a  decline  in  the  quality  of  servants  is  no  mod 
ern  thing.  Shakespeare  makes  Orlando  say  to  Adam  : 

"  0,  good  old  man,  how  well  in  thee  appears 
The  constant  service  of  the  antique  world, 
When  service  sweat  for  duty,  not  for  meed ! 
Thou  art  not  of  the  fashion  of  these  times, 
When  none  will  sweat  but  for  promotion." 

When  the  faithful  old  servant  is  brought  upon  the  stage, 
we  may  be  sure  he  was  getting  rare.  A  century  later, 
we  have  explicit  testimony  that  things  were  as  bad  in 
this  respect  as  they  are  now.  Don  Manuel  Gonzales, 
who  travelled  in  England  in  1730,  says  of  London  ser 
vants  :  "  As  to  common  menial  servants,  they  have 
great  wages,  are  well  kept  and  cloathed,  but  are  notwith 
standing  the  plague  of  almost  every  house  in  town. 
They  form  themselves  into  societies  or  rather  confeder- 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     265 

acies,  contributing  to  the  maintenance  of  each  other 
when  out  of  place,  and  if  any  of  them  cannot  manage 
the  family  where  they  are  entertained,  as  they  please, 
immediately  they  give  notice  they  will  be  gone.  There 
is  no  speaking  to  them,  they  are  above  correction,  and 
if  a  master  should  attempt  it,  he  may  expect  to  be 
handsomely  drubbed  by  the  creature  he  feeds  and  har 
bors,  or  perhaps  an  action  brought  against  him  for  it. 
It  is  become  a  common  saying,  If  my  servant  beii't  a 
thief,  if  he  be  but  honest,  I  can  bear  with  other  things. 
And  indeed  it  is  very  rare  in  London  to  meet  with  an 
honest  servant."  *  Southey  writes  to  his  daughter 
Edith,  in  1824,  "All  the  maids  eloped  because  I  had 
turned  a  man  out  of  the  kitchen  at  eleven  o'clock  on  the 
preceding  night."  Nay,  Hugh  Rhodes,  in  his  Boke  of 
Nurture  (1577),  speaks  of  servants  "  ofte  fleeting,"  i.  e. 
leaving  one  master  for  another. 

One  of  the  most  curious  things  revealed  to  us  in  these 
volumes  is  the  fact  that  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  was  seeking 
the  philosopher's  stone,  that  universal  elixir  which  could 
transmute  all  things  to  its  own  substance.  This  is  plain 
from  the  correspondence  of  Edward  Howes.  Howes 
goes  to  a  certain  doctor,  professedly  to  consult  him  about 
the  method  of  making  a  cement  for  earthen  vessels,  no 
doubt  crucibles.  His  account  of  him  is  amusing,  and  re 
minds  one  of  Ben  Jonson's  Subtle.  This  was  one  of  tho' 
many  quacks  who  gulled  men  during  that  twilight 
through  which  alchemy  was  passing  into  chemistry. 
"  This  Dr,  for  a  Dr  he  is,  brags  that  if  he  have  but  th<^ 
hint  or  notice  of  any  useful  thing  not  yet  invented,  he 
will  undertake  to  find  it  out,  except  some  few  which  he 
hath  vowed  not  to  meddle  with  as  vitrum  maliabile,  per- 
pet.  motus,  via  proxima  ad  Indos  &  lapis  philosi :  all,  or 

*  Collection  of  Voyages,  &c.,  from  the  Library  of  the  Earl  of  Ox 
ford,  Vol.  I.  p.  151. 
12 


2G6  NEW  ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES  AGO. 

anything  else  he  will  undertake,  but  for  his  private  gain, 
to  make  a  monopoly  thereof  &  to  sell  the  use  or  knowl 
edge  thereof  at  too  high  rates."  This  breed  of  pedlers 
in  science  is  not  yet  extinct.  The  exceptions  made  by 
the  Doctor  show  a  becoming  modesty.  Again  :  "  I  have 
been  2  or  3  times  with  the  Dr  &  can  get  but  small  satis 
faction  about  your  queries Yet  I  must  confess 

he  seemed  very  free  to  me,  only  in  the  main  he  was 
mystical.  This  he  said,  that  when  the  will  of  God  is  you 
shall  know  what  you  desire,  it  will  come  with  such  a 
light  that  it  will  make  a  harmony  among  all  your  au 
thors,  causing  them  sweetly  to  agree,  &  put  you  forever 
out  of  doubt  &  question."  In  another  letter  :  "  I  cannot 
discover  into  terrain  incognitam,  but  I  have  had  a  ken  of 
it  showed  unto  me.  The  way  to  it  is,  for  the  most  part, 
horrible  &  fearful,  the  dangers  none  worse,  to  them  that  are 

destinati  filii :  sometimes  I  am  travelling  that  way 

I  think  I  have  spoken  with  some  that  have  been  there." 
Howes  writes  very  cautiously  :  "  Dear  friend,  I  desire 
with  all  my  heart  that  I  might  write  plainer  to  you,  but 
in  discovering  the  mystery,  I  may  diminish  its  majesty 
&  give  occasion  to  the  profane  to  abuse  it,  if  it  should 
fall  into  unworthy  hands."  By  and  by  he  begins  to 
think  his  first  doctor  a  humbug,  but  he  finds  a  better. 
Howes  was  evidently  a  man  of  imaginative  temper,  fit  to 
be  captivated  by  the  alchemistic  theory  of  the  unity  of 
composition  in  nature,  which  was  so  attractive  to  Goethe. 
Perhaps  the  great  poet  was  himself  led  to  it  by  his  Rosi- 
crucian  studies  when  writing  the  first  part  of  Faust. 
Howes  tells  his  friend  that  "  there  is  all  good  to  be  found 
in  unity,  &  all  evil  in  duality  &  multiplicity.  Phoe 
nix  ilia  admiranda  sola  semper  existit,  therefore  while  a 
man  &  she  is  two,  he  shall  never  see  her,"  —  a  truth 
of  very  wide  application,  and  too  often  lost  sight  of  or 
never  seen  at  all.  "  The  Arabian  Philos.  I  writ  to  you 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO   CENTURIES  AGO,  267 

of,  he  was  styled  among  us  Dr  Lyon,  the  best  of  all  the 
Eosicrucians  *  that  ever  I  met  withal,  far  beyond  Dr 
Ewer  :  they  that  are  of  his  strain  are  knowing  men  ;  they 
pretend  [i.  e.  claim]  to  live  in  free  light,  they  honor  God 
&  do  good  to  the  people  among  whom  they  live,  &  I  con 
ceive  you  are  in  the  right  that  they  had  their  learning 
from  Arabia." 

Howes  is  a  very  interesting  person,  a  mystic  of  the 
purest  kind,  and  that  while  learning  to  be  an  attorney 
with  Emanuel  Downing.  How  little  that  perfunctory 
person  dreamed  of  what  was  going  on  under  his  nose, 
—  as  little  as  of  the  spiritual  wonders  that  lay  beyond 
the  tip  of  it !  Howes  was  a  Swedenborgian  before 
Swedenborg.  Take  this,  for  example  :  "  But  to  our 
sympathetical  business  whereby  we  may  communicate 
our  minds  one  to  another  though  the  diameter  of  the 
earth  interpose.  Diana  non  est  centrum  omnium.  I 
would  have  you  so  good  a  geometrician  as  to  know  your 
own  centre.  Did  you  ever  yet  measure  your  everlasting 
self,  the  length  of  your  life,  the  breadth  of  your  love, 
the  depth  of  your  wisdom  &  the  height  of  your  light  1 
Let  Truth  be  your  centre,  &  you  may  do  it,  otherways 
not.  I  could  wish  you  would  now  begin  to  leave  off  be 
ing  altogether  an  outward  man  ;  this  is  but  casa  Regentis  ; 
the  Ruler  can  draw  you  straight  lines  from  your  centre 
to  the  confines  of  an  infinite  circumference,  by  which 
you  may  pass  from  any  part  of  the  circumference  to 
another  without  obstacle  of  earth  or  secation  of  lines,  if 
you  observe  &  keep  but  one  &  the  true  &  only  centre,  to 
pass  by  it,  from  it,  &  to  it.  Methinks  I  now  see  you 
intus  et  extra  &  talk  to  you,  but  you  mind  me  not  be 
cause  you  are  from  home,  you  are  not  within,  you  look 
as  if  you  were  careless  of  yourself  \  your  hand  &  your 
voice  differ  ;  't  is  my  friend's  hand,  I  know  it  well ;  but 

*  Howes  writes  the  word  symbolically. 


268  NEW  ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES  AGO. 

the  voice  is  your  enemy's.  0,  my  friend,  if  you  love 
me,  get  you  home,  get  you  in  !  You  have  a  friend  as 
well  as  an  enemy.  Know  them  by  their  voices.  The 
one  is  still  driving  or  enticing  you  out ;  the  other  would 
have  you  stay  within.  Be  within  and  keep  within,  & 
all  that  are  within  &  keep  within  shall  you  see  know  & 
communicate  with  to  the  full,  &  shall  not  need  to  strain 
your  outward  senses  to  see  &  hear  that  (which  is  like 
themselves  uncertain  &  too-too  often  false]  but,  abiding 
forever  within,  in  the  centre  of  Truth,  from  thence  you 
may  behold  &  understand  the  innumerable  divers  ema 
nations  within  the  circumference,  &  still  within ;  for 
without  are  falsities,  lies,  untruths,  dogs  &c."  Howes 
was  tolerant  also,  not  from  want  of  faith,  but  from  depth 
of  it.  "  The  relation  of  your  fight  with  the  Indians  I 
have  read  in  print,  but  of  the  fight  among  yourselves, 
bellum  linguarum  the  strife  of  tongues,  I  have  heard 
much,  but  little  to  the  purpose.  I  wonder  your  people, 
that  pretend  to  know  so  much,  doe  not  know  that  love 
is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law,  &  that  against  love  there  is 
no  law."  Howes  forgot  that  what  might  cause  only  a 
ripple  in  London  might  overwhelm  the  tiny  Colony  in 
Boston.  Two  years  later,  he  writes  more  philosophically, 
and  perhaps  with  a  gentle  irony,  concerning  "  two  mon 
strous  births  &  a  general  earthquake."  He  hints  that 
the  people  of  the  Bay  might  perhaps  as  well  take  these 
signs  to  themselves  as  lay  them  at  the  door  of  Mrs. 
Hutchinson  and  what  not.  "  Where  is  there  such 
another  people  then  [as]  in  New  England,  that  labors 
might  &  main  to  have  Christ  formed  in  them,  yet  would 
give  or  appoint  him  his  shape  &  clothe  him  too  ?  It 
cannot  be  denied  that  we  have  conceived  many  mon 
strous  imaginations  of  Christ  Jesus  :  the  one  imagination 
says,  Lo,  here  he  is  ;  the  other  says,  Lo,  there  he  is  ;  mul 
tiplicity  of  conceptions,  but  is  there  any  one  true  shape 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     269 

of  Him  1  And  if  one  of  many  produce  a  shape,  't  is 
not  the  shape  of  the  Son  of  God,  but  an  ugly  horrid 
metamorphosis.  Neither  is  it  a  living  shape,,  but  a  dead 
one,  yet  a  crow  thinks  her  own  bird  the  fairest,  &  most 
prefer  their  own  wisdom  before  God's,  Antichrist  before 
Christ."  Howes  had  certainly  arrived  at  that  "  centre  " 
of  which  he  speaks  and  was  before  his  time,  as  a  man 
of  speculation,  never  a  man  of  action,  may  sometimes  be. 
He  was  fitter  for  Plotinus's  colony  than  Winthrop's.  Ho 
never  came  to  New  England,  yet  there  was  always  a 
leaven  of  his  style  of  thinkers  here. 

Howes  was  the  true  adept,  seeking  what  spiritual  ore 
there  might  be  among  the  dross  of  the  hermetic  philos 
ophy.  What  he  says  sincerely  and  inwardly  was  the 
cant  of  those  outward  professors  of  the  doctrine  who 
were  content  to  dwell  in  the  material  part  of  it  forever. 
In  Jonathan  Brewster,  we  have  a  specimen  of  these 
Wagners.  Is  it  not  curious,  that  there  should  have  been 
a  balneum  Marice  at  New  London  two  hundred  years 
ago  1  that  la  recherche  de  VAlsolu  should  have  been  go 
ing  on  there  in  a  log-hut,  under  constant  fear  that  the 
Indians  would  put  out,  not  merely  the  name  of  one  lit 
tle  life,  but,  for  worse,  the  fire  of  our  furnace,  and  so 
rob  the  world  of  this  divine  secret,  just  on  the  point  of 
revealing  itself  1  Alas  !  poor  Brewster's  secret  was  one 
that  many  have  striven  after  before  and  since,  who  did 
not  call  themselves  alchemists,  —  the  secret  of  getting 
gold  without  earning  it,  —  a  chase  that  brings  some  men 
to  a  four-in-hand  on  Shoddy  Avenue,  and  some  to  the 
penitentiary,  in  both  cases  advertising  its  utter  vanity. 
Brewster  is  a  capital  specimen  of  his  class,  who  are  bet 
ter  than  the  average,  because  they  do  mix  a  little  ima 
gination  with  their  sordidness,  and  who  have  also  their 
representatives  among  us,  in  those  who  expect  the  Jen 
nings  and  other  ideal  estates  in  England.  If  Hawthorne 


270  NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

had  but  known  of  him  !  And  yet  how  perfectly  did  his 
genius  divine  that  ideal  element  in  our  early  New  Eng 
land  life,  conceiving  what  must  have  been  without  ask 
ing  proof  of  what  actually  was  ! 

An  extract  or  two  will  sufficiently  exhibit  Brewster  in 
his  lunes.  Sending  back  some  alchemistic  book  to 
Winthrop,  he  tells  him  that  if  his  name  be  kept  secret, 
"  I  will  write  as  clear  a  light,  as  far  as  I  dare  to,  in  find 
ing  the  first  ingredience The  first  figure  in  Flamo- 

iiell  doth  plainly  resemble  the  first  ingredience,  what  it 
is,  &  from  whence  it  comes,  &  how  gotten,  as  there  you 
may  plainly  see  set  forth  by  2  resemblances  held  in  a 
man's  hand  j  for  the  confections  there  named  is  a  delu 
sion,  for  they  are  but  the  operations  of  the  work  after 
some  time  set,  as  the  scum  of  the  Red  Sea,  which  is  the 
Virgin's  Milk  upon  the  top  of  the  vessel,  white.  Red  Sea 
is  the  sun  &  moon  calcinated  &  brought  &  reduced  into 
water  mineral  which  in  some  time,  &  most  of  the  whole 
time,  is  red.  2ndly,  the  fat  of  mercurial  wind,  that  is  the 
fat  or  quintessence  of  sun  &  moon,  earth  &  water,  drawn 
out  from  them  both,  &  flies  aloft  &  bore  up  by  the  oper 
ation  of  our  mercury,  that  is  our  fire  which  is  our  air  or 
wind."  This  is  as  satisfactory  as  Lepidus's  account  of 
the  generation  of  the  crocodile  :  "  Your  serpent  of  Egypt 
is  bred  now  of  your  mud  by  the  operation  of  your  sun  : 
so  is  your  crocodile."  After  describing  the  three  kinds 
of  fire,  that  of  the  lamp,  that  of  ashes,  and  that  against 
nature,  which  last  "  is  the  fire  of  fire,  that  is  the  secret 
fire  drawn  up,  being  the  quintessence  of  the  sun  & 
moon,  with  the  other  mercurial  water  joined  with  &  to 
gether,  which  is  fire  elemental,"  he  tells  us  that  "  these 
fires  are  &  doth  contain  the  whole  mystery  of  the  work." 
The  reader,  perhaps,  thinks  that  he  has  nothing  to  do 
but  forthwith  to  turn  all  the  lead  he  can  lay  his  hands 
on  into  gold.  But  no :  "If  you  had  the  first  ingre- 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     271 

dience  &  the  proportion  of  each,  yet  all  were  nothing  if 
you  had  not  the  certain  times  &  seasons  of  the  planets 
&  signs,  when  to  give  more  or  less  of  this  fire,  namely 
a  hot  &  dry,  a  cold  &  moist  fire  which  you  must  use  in 
the  mercurial  water  before  it  comes  to  black  &,  after 
into  white  &  then  red,  which  is  only  done  by  these  fires, 
which  when  you  practise  you  will  easily  see  &  perceive, 
that  you  shall  stand  amazed,  &  admire  at  the  great  & 
admirable  wisdom  of  God,  that  can  produce  such  a  won 
derful,  efficacious,  powerful  thing  as  this  is  to  convert 
all  metallic  bodies  to  its  own  nature,  which  may  bo 
well  called  a  first  essence.  I  say  by  such  weak  simple 
means  of  so  little  value  &  so  little  &  easy  labor  &  skill, 
that  I  may  say  with  Artephus,  200  page,  it  is  of  a 
wrorke  so  easy  &  short,  fitter  for  women  &  young  chil 
dren  than  sage  &  grave  men I  thank  the  Lord,  I 

understand  the  matter  perfectly  in  the  said  book,  yet  I 
could  desire  to  have  it  again  1 2  months  hence,  for  about 
that  time  I  shall  have  occasion  to  peruse,  whenas  I  come 
to  the  second  working  which  is  most  difficult,  which 
will  be  some  three  or  [4]  months  before  the  perfect 
white,  &  afterwards,  as  Artephus  saith,  I  may  burn  my 
books,  for  he  saith  it  is  one  regiment  as  well  for  the  red 
as  for  the  white.  The  Lord  in  mercy  give  me  life  to 
see  the  end  of  it !  "  —  an  exclamation  I  more  than  once 
made  in  the  course  of  some  of  Brewster's  periods. 

Again,  under  pledge  of  profound  secrecy,  he  sends 
Winthrop  a  manuscript,  which  he  may  communicate  to 
the  owner  of  the  volume  formerly  lent,  because  "  it 
gave  me  such  light  in  the  second  work  as  I  should  not 
readily  have  found  out  by  study,  also  &  especially  how 
to  work  the  elixir  fit  for  medicine  &  healing  all  maladies 
which  is  clean  another  way  of  working  than  we  held 
formerly.  Also  a  light  given  how  to  dissolve  any  hard 
substance  into  the  elixir,  which  is  also  another  work. 


272  NEW  ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES  AGO. 

And  many  other  things  which  in  Riblcy  [Riploy  ?]  I 
could  not  find  out.  More  works  of  the  same  I  would 
gladly  see  ....  for,  Sir,  so  it  is  that  any  book  of  this 
subject,  I  can  understand  it,  though  never  so  darkly 
written,  having  both  knowledge  &  experience  of  the 
world,*  that  now  easily  I  may  understand  their  envi 
ous  carriages  to  hide  it You  may  marvel  why  I 

should  give   any  light  to  others  in  this  thing  before  I 
have  perfected   my  own.     This  know,   that   my  work 
being  true  thus  far  by  all  their  writings,  it  cannot  fail 
....  for  if  &c  &c  you  cannot  miss  if  you  would,  ex 
cept  you  break  your  glass."     He  confesses  he   is  mista 
ken  as  to  the  time  required,  which  he  now,  as  well  as  I 
can  make  out,  reckons  at  about  ten  years.     "  I  fear  I 
shall  not  live  to  see  it  finished,  in  regard  partly  of  the 
Indians,  who,  I  fear,  will  raise  wars, .  as  also  I  have  a 
conceit  that  God  sees  me  not  worthy  of  such  a  blessing, 
by  reason  of  my  manifold  miscarriages."     Therefore  he 
"  will  shortly  write  all  the   whole  work  in  few  words 
plainly  which  may  be  done  in  20  lines  from  the  first  to 
the  last  &  seal  it  up  in  a  little  box   &  subscribe  it  to 
yourself  ....   &  will  so  write  it  that  neither  wife  nor 
children  shall  know  thereof."     If  Winthrop  should  suc 
ceed  in  bringing  the  work  to  perfection,  Brewster  begs 
him  to  remember  his  wife  and  children.      "  I  mean  if 
this  my  work  should  miscarry  by  wars  of  the  Indians, 
for  I  may  not  remove  it  till  it  be  perfected,  otherwise  I 
should  so  unsettle  the  body  by  removing  sun  &  moon 
out  of  their  settled  places,  that  there  would  then  be  no 
other  afterworking."     Once  more  he  inculcates  secrecy, 
and  for  a  most  comical  reason  :  "  For  it  is  such  a  secret 
as  is  not  fit  for  every  one  either  for  secrecy  or  for  parts 
to  use  it,  as  God's  secret  for  his  glory,  to  do  good  there 
with,  or  else  they  may  do  a  great  deal  of  hurt,  spend- 
*  "  World  "  here  should  clearly  be  "  work." 


NEW   ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES  AGO.  273 

ing  &  employing  it  to  satisfy  sinful  lusts.  There 
fore,  I  intreat  you,  sir,  spare  to  use  my  name,  &  let  my 
letters  I  send  either  be  safely  kept  or  burned  that  I 
write  about  it,  for  indeed,  sir,  I  am  more  than  before 
sensible  of  the  evil  effects  that  will  arise  by  the  publish 
ing  of  it.  I  should  never  be  at  quiet,  neither  at  home 
nor  abroad,  for  one  or  other  that  would  be  enquiring  & 
seeking  after  knowledge  thereof,  that  I  should  be  tired 
out  &  forced  to  leave  the  place  :  nay,  it  would  be  blazed 
abroad  into  Europe."  How  much  more  comic  is  nature 
than  any  comedy  !  Mutato  nomine  de  te.  Take  heart, 
ambitious  youth,  the  sun  and  moon  will  be  no  more  dis 
concerted  by  any  effort  of  yours  than  by  the  pots  and 
pans  of  Jonathan  Brewster.  It  is  a  curious  proof  of  the 
duality  so  common  (yet  so  often  overlooked)  in  human 
character,  that  Brewster  was  all  this  while  manager  of 
the  Plymouth  trading-post,  near  what  is  now  New  Lon 
don.  The  only  professors  of  the  transmutation  of  met 
als  who  still  impose  on  mankind  are  to  be  found  in  what 
is  styled  the  critical  department  of  literature.  Their 
materia  prima,  or  universal  solvent,  serves  equally  for 
the  lead  of  Tupper  or  the  brass  of  Swinburne. 

In  a  letter  of  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  to  J.  Winthrop,  Jr., 
we  find  some  odd  prescriptions.  "  For  all  sorts  of 
agues,  I  have  of  late  tried  the  following  magnetical  ex 
periment  with  infallible  success.  Pare  the  patient's 
nails  when  the  fit  is  coming  on,  &  put  the  parings  into 
a  little  bag  of  fine  linen  or  sarsenet,  &  tie  that  about  a 
live  eel's  neck  in  a  tub  of  water.  The  eel  will  die  &  the 
patient  will  recover.  And  if  a  dog  or  hog  eat  that  eel, 
they  will  also  die." 

"  The  man  recovered  of  the  bite, 

The  dog  it  was  that  died !  "        t 

"  I  have  known  one  that  cured  all  deliriums  &  frenzies 
whatsoever,  &  at  once  taking,  with  an  elixir  made  of  dew, 
12*  K 


274  NEW  ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES   AGO. 

nothing  but  dew  purified  &  nipped  up  in  a  glass  &  di 
gested  15  months  till  all  of  it  was  become  a  gray  powder, 
not  one  drop  of  humidity  remaining.  This  I  know  to 
be  true,  &  that  first  it  was  as  black  as  ink,  then  green, 
then  gray,  &  at  22  months'  end  it  was  as  white  & 
lustrous  as  any  oriental  pearl.  But  it  cured  manias  at 
15  months'  end."  Poor  Brewster  would  have  been  the 
,  better  for  a  dose  of  it,  as  well  as  some  in  our  day,  who 
expect  to  cure  men  of  being  men  by  act  of  Congress. 
In  the  same  letter  Digby  boasts  of  having  made  known 
the  properties  of  quinquina,  and  also  of  the  sympathetic 
powder,  with  which  latter  he  wrought  a  "  famous  cure  " 
of  pleasant  James  Ho  well,  author  of  the  "  Letters." 
I -do  not  recollect  that  Howell  anywhere  alludes  to  it. 
In  the  same  letter,  Digby  speaks  of  the  books  he  had 
sent  to  Harvard  College,  and  promises  to  send  more. 
In  all  Paris  he  cannot  find  a  copy  of  Blaise  Viginere 
Des  Ckiffres.  "  I  had  it  in  my  library  in  England,  but 
at  the  plundering  of  my  house  I  lost  it  with  many  other 
good  books.  I  have  laid  out  in  all  places  for  it."  The 
words  we  have  underscored  would  be  called  a  Yankeeism 
now.  The  house  was  Gatehurst,  a  fine  Elizabethan 
dwelling,  still,  or  lately,  standing.  Digby  made  his 
peace  with  Cromwell,  and  professes  his  readiness  to 
spend  his  blood  for  him.  He  kept  well  with  both  sides, 
and  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  Hooke  saying  that  he 
hears  no  good  of  him  from  any. 

The  early  colonists  found  it  needful  to  bring  over  a 
few  trained  soldiers,  both  as  drillmasters  and  engineers. 
Underbill,  Patrick,  and  Gardner  had  served  in  the  Low 
Countries,  probably  also  Mason.  As  Paris  has  been 
said  to  be  not  precisely  the  place  for  a  deacon,  so  the 
camp  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  could  hardly  have  been 
the  best  training-school  for  Puritans  in  practice,  however 
it  may  have  been  for  masters  of  casuistic  theology.  The 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     275 

position  of  these  rough  warriors  among  a  people  like 
those  of  the  first  emigration  must  have  been  a  droll  one. 
That  of  Captain  Underbill  certainly  was.  In  all  our 
early  history,  there  is  no  figure  so  comic.  Full  of  the 
pedantry  of  his  profession  and  fond  of  noble  phrases,  he 
is  a  kind  of  cross  between  Dugald  Dalgetty  and  Ancient 
Pistol,  with  a  slight  relish  of  the  miles  gloriosus.  Under 
bill  had  taken  side  with  Mr.  Wheelwright  in  his  heretical 
opinions,  and  there  is  every  reason  why  he  should  have 
maintained,  with  all  the  ardor  of  personal  interest,  the 
efficiency  of  a  covenant  of  grace  without  reference  to 
the  works  of  the  subject  of  it.  Coming  back  from  a 
visit  to  England  in  1638,  he  "  was  questioned  for  some 
speeches  uttered  by  him  in  the  ship,  viz  :  that  they  at 
Boston  were  zealous  as  the  scribes  and  pharisees  were 
and  as  Paul  was  before  his  conversion,  which  he  deny 
ing,  they  were  proved  to  his  face  by  a  sober  woman 
whom  he  had  seduced  in  the  ship  and  drawn  to  his  opin 
ion  ;  but  she  was  afterwards  better  informed  in  the 
truth.  Among  other  passages,  he  told  her  how  he  came 
by  his  assurance,  saying  that,  having  long  lain  under  a 
spirit  of  bondage,  and  continued  in  a  legal  way  near  five 
years,  he  could  get  no  assurance,  till  at  length,  as  he 
was  taking  a  pipe  of  the  good  creature  tobacco,  the 
spirit  fell  home  upon  his  heart,  an  absolute  promise  of 
free  grace,  with  such  assurance  and  joy,  as  he  never 
doubted  since  of  his  good  estate,  neither  should  he, 
whatsoever  sin  he  should  fall  into,  —  a  good  preparative 
for  such  motions  as  he  familiarly  used  to  make  to  some 

of  that  sex The  next  day  he   was  called  again 

and  banished.  The  Lord's  day  after,  he  made  a  speech 
in  the  assembly,  showing  that  as  the  Lord  was  pleased  to 
convert  Paul  as  he  was  persecuting  <kc,  so  he  might  mani 
fest  himself  to  him  as  he  was  making  moderate  use  of 
the  good  creature  called  tobacco."  A  week  later  "he  was 


276     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

privately  dealt  with  upon  suspicion  of  incontinency  .... 
but  his  excuse  was  that  the  woman  was  in  great  trouble  o? 
mind,  and  some  temptations,  and  that  he  resorted  to 
her  to  comfort  her."  He  went  to  the  Eastward,  and, 
having  run  himself  out  there,  thought  it  best  to  come 
back  to  Boston  and  reinstate  himself  by  eating  his  leek. 
"  He  came  in  his  worst  clothes  (being  accustomed  to 
take  great  pride  in  his  bravery  and  neatness)  without  a 
band,  in  a  foul  linen  cap  pulled  close  to  his  eyes,  and, 
standing  upon  a  form,  he  did,  with  many  deep  sighs  and 
abundance  of  tears,  lay  open  his  wicked  course,  his 
adultery,  his  hypocrisy  &c.  He  spake  well,  save  that 
his  blubbering  &c.  interrupted  him."  We  hope  he 
was  a  sincere  penitent,  but  men  of  his  complexion 
are  apt  to  be  pleased  with  such  a  tragi-comedy  of  self- 
abasement,  if  only  they  can  be  chief  actors  and  con 
spicuous  enough  therein.  In  the  correspondence  before 
-.is  Underbill  appears  in  full  turkey-cock  proportions. 
Not  having  been  advanced  according  to  his  own  opinion 
of  his  merits,  he  writes  to  Governor  Winthrop,  with  an 
oblique  threat  that  must  have  amused  him  somewhat  : 
"  I  profess,  sir,  till  I  know  the  cause,  I  shall  not  be 
satisfied,  but  I  hope  God  will  subdue  me  to  his  will ;  yet 
this  I  say  that  such  handling  of  officers  in  foreign  parts 
hath  so  far  subverted  some  of  them  as  to  cause  them 
turn  public  rebels  against  their  state  &  kingdom,  which 
God  forbid  should  ever  be  found  once  so  much  as  to 
appear  in  my  breast."  Why,  then  the  world  's  mine 
oyster,  which  I  with  sword  will  open !  Next  we  hear 
him  on  a  point  of  military  discipline  at  Salem.  "  It 
is  this  :  how  they  have  of  their  own  appointment  made 
them  a  captain,  lieutenant  &  ensign,  &  after  such  a 
manner  as  was  never  heard  of  in  any  school  of  war,  nor 

hi  no  kingdom  under  heaven For  my  part,  if 

there   should  not  be  a  reformation  in  this  disordered 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     277 

practise,  I  would  not  acknowledge  such  officers.  If 
officers  should  be  of  no  better  esteem  than  for  consta 
bles  to  place  them,  &  martial  discipline  to  proceed  dis 
orderly,  I  would  rather  lay  down  my  command  than  to 
shame  so  noble  a  prince  from  whom  we  came."  Again  : 
"  Whereas  it  is  somewhat  questionable  whether  the 
three  months  I  was  absent,  as  well  in  the  service  of  the 
country  as  of  other  particular  persons,  my  request  there 
fore  is  that  this  honored  Court  would  be  pleased  to  de 
cide  this  controversy,  myself  alleging  it  to  be  the  cus 
tom  of  Nations  that,  if  a  Commander  be  lent  to  another 
State,  by  that  State  to  whom  he  is  a  servant,  both  his 
place  &  means  is  not  detained  from  him,  so  long  as  he 
doth  not  refuse  the  call  of  his  own  State  to  which  he  is 
a  servant,  in  case  they  shall  call  him  home."  Then 
bringing  up  again  his  "  ancient  suit "  for  a  grant  of 
land,  he  throws  in  a  neat  touch  of  piety :  "  &  if  the 
honored  Court  shall  vouchsafe  to  make  some  addition, 
that  which  hath  not  been  deserved,  by  the  same  power 
of  God,  may  be  in  due  season."  In  a  postscript,  he  gives 
a  fine  philosophical  reason  for  this  desired  addition  which 
will  go  to  the  hearts  of  many  in  these  days  of  high 
prices  and  wasteful  taxation.  "  The  time  was  when  a 
little  went  far  ;  then  much  was  not  known  nor  desired  ; 
the  reason  of  the  difference  lieth  only  in  the  error  of 
judgment,  for  nature  requires  no  more  to  uphold  it  now 
than  when  it  was  satisfied  with  less."  The  valiant  Cap 
tain  interprets  the  law  of  nations,  as  sovereign  powers 
are  wont  to  do,  to  suit  his  advantage  in  the  special  case. 
We  find  a  parallel  case  in  a  letter  of  Bryan  Rosseter  to 
John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  pleading  for  a  remission  of  taxes. 
"  The  lawes  of  nations  exempt  allowed  phisitians  from 
personall  services,  &  their  estates  from  rates  &  assess 
ments."  In  the  Declaration  of  the  town  of  Southamp 
ton  on  Long  Island  (1673),  the  dignity  of  constable  is 


278     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

valued  at  a  juster  rate  than  Underbill  was  inclined  to 
put  upon  it.  The  Dutch,  it  seems,  demanded  of  them  "  to 
deliver  up  to  them  the  badge  of  Civil  &  Military  power ; 
namely,  the  Constable's  staffe  &  the  Colonel's."  Mayor 
Munroe  of  New  Orleans  did  not  more  effectually  magnify 
his  office  when  he  surrendered  the  city  to  General  Butler. 
Underbill's  style  is  always  of  the  finest.  His  spell 
ing  was  under  the  purest  covenant  of  grace.  I  must 
give  a  single  specimen  of  it  from  a  letter  whose  high  • 
moral  tone  is  all  the  more  diverting  that  it  was  written 
while  he  was  under  excommunication  for  the  sin  which 
he  afterwards  confessed.  It  is  addressed  to  Winthrop 
and  Dudley.  "  Honnored  in  the  Lord.  Youer  silenc 
one  more  admirse  me.  I  youse  chrischan  playnnes.  I 
know  you  love  it.  Silenc  can  not  reduce  the  hart  of 
youer  loveg  brother  :  I  would  the  right cho us  would  smite 
me,  espeschali  youer  slfe  &  the  honnored  Depoti  to  whom 
I  also  dereckt  this  letter  together  with  youer  honnored 
slfe.  Jesos  Christ  did  wayt ;  &  God  his  Father  did  dig 
and  telfe  bout  the  barren  figtre  before  he  would  cast 
it  of :  I  would  to  God  you  would  tender  my  soule 
so  as  to  youse  playnnes  with  me."  (As  if  anything 
could  be  plainer  than  excommunication  and  banish 
ment  !)  "I  wrot  to  you  both,  but  now  [no]  answer  ;  & 
here  I  am  dayli  abused  by  malischous  tong.se  :  John 
Baker  I  here  hath  rot  to  the  honnored  depoti  how  as  I 
was  dronck  &  like  to  be  cild,  &  both  falc,  upon  okachon 
I  delt  with  Wannerton  for  intrushon,  &  fmdding  them 
resolutli  bent  to  rout  out  all  gud  a  mong  us  &  advanc 
there  superstischous  waye,  &  by  boystrous  words  inde- 
ferd  to  fritten  men  to  acomplish  his  end,  &  he  abasing 
me  to  my  face,  dru  upon  him  with  intent  to  corb  his  in 
solent  and  dasterdli  sperrite,  but  now  [no]  danger  of 
my  life,  although  it  might  hafe  bin  just  with  God  to 
hafe  giffen  me  in  the  hanse  of  youer  enemise  &  mine, 


NEW  ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES  AGO.  279 

for  they  hat  the  wayse  of  the  Lord  &  them  that  profes 
them,  &  therfore  layes  trapes  to  cachte  the  pore  into 
there  deboyst  corses,  as  ister  daye  on  Pickeren  their 
Chorch  Warden  cairn  up  to  us  with  intent  to  mak  some 
of  ourse  drone,  as  is  sospeckted,  but  the  Lord  soferd  him 
so  to  misdemen  himslfe  as  he  is  likli  to  li  by  the  hielse 

this  too  month My  hombel  request  is  that  you 

will  be  charitabel  of  me Let  justies  and  rnerci  be 

goyned You  may  plese  to  soggest  youer  will  to 

this  barrer,  you  will  find  him  tracktabel."  The  conclud 
ing  phrase  seems  admirably  chosen,  when  we  consider  the 
means  of  making  people  "tractable"  which  the  magis 
trates  of  the  Bay  had  in  their  hands,  and  were  not  slow 
to  exercise,  as  Underhill  himself  had  experienced. 

I  cannot  deny  myself  the  pleasure  of  giving  one 
more  specimen  of  the  Captain's  "  grand-delinquent " 
style,  as  I  once  heard  such  fine  writing  called  by  a  per 
son  who  little  dreamed  what  a  hit  he  had  made.  So  far 
(as  I  have  observed,  our  public  defaulters,  and  others  who 
pave  nothing  to  say  for  themselves,  always  rise  in  style 
'as  they  sink  in  self-respect.  He  is  speaking  of  one 
Scott,  who  had  laid  claim  to  certain  lands,  and  had  been 
called  on  to  show  his  title.  "  If  he  break  the  comand 
of  the  Asembli  &  bring  not  in  the  counterfit  portreturo 
of  the  King  imprest  in  yello  waxe,  anext  to  his  false  per- 
petuiti  of  20  mile  square,  where  by  he  did  chet  the 
Town  of  Brouckhaven,  he  is  to  induer  the  sentance  of 
the  Court  of  Asisies."  Pistol  would  have  been  charmed 
with  that  splendid  amplification  of  the  Great  Seal.  We 
have  seen  nothing  like  it  in  our  day,  except  in  a  speech 
made  to  Mr.  George  Peabody  at  Danvers,  if  I  recollect, 
while  that  gentleman  was  so  elaborately  concealing  from 
his  left  hand  what  his  right  had  been  doing.  As  ex 
amples  of  Captain  Underbill's  adroitness  in  phonetic 
spelling,  I  offer  fafarabel  and  poseschonse,  and  reluc 
tantly  leave  him. 


280     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

Another  very  entertaining  fellow  for  those  who  are 
willing  to  work  through  a  pretty  thick  husk  of  tiresome 
ness  for  a  genuine  kernel  of  humor  underneath  is  Cod- 
dington.  The  elder  Winthrop  endured  many  trials,  but 
I  doubt  if  any  were  sharper  than  those  which  his  son 
had  to  undergo  in  the  correspondence  of  this  excellently 
tiresome  man.  Tantce  molis  Romanam  condere  gentem  ! 
The  dulness  of  Coddington,  always  that  of  no  ordinary 
man,  became  irritable  and  aggressive  after  being  stung 
by  the  gadfly  of  Quakerism.  Running  counter  to  its 
proper  nature,  it  made  him  morbidly  uneasy.  Already 
an  Anabaptist,  his  brain  does  not  seem  to  have  been  largo 
enough  to  lodge  two  maggots  at  once  with  any  comfort 
to  himself.  Fancy  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  with  all  the  af 
fairs  of  the  Connecticut  Colony  on  his  back,  expected  to 
prescribe  alike  for  the  spiritual  and  bodily  ailments  of 
all  the  hypochondriacs  in  his  government,  and  with 
Philip's  war  impending,  —  fancy  him  exposed  also  to 
perpetual  trials  like  this  :  "  G.  F.  [George  Fox]  hath  sent 
thee  a  book  of  his  by  Jere  :  Bull,  &  two  more  now 
which  thou  mayest  communicate  to  thy  Council  &  offi 
cers.  Also .  I  remember  before  thy  last  being  in  Eng 
land,  I  sent  thee  a  book  written  by  Francis  Howgall 
against  persecution,  by  Joseph  Nicallson  which  book 
thou  lovingly  accepted  and  communicated  to  the  Com 
missioners  of  the  United  Colonies  (as  I  desired)  also 
J.  N.  thou  entertained  with  a  loving  respect  which  en 
couraged  me  "  (fatal  hospitality  !)  —  "As  a  token  of  that 
ancient  love  that  for  this  42  years  I  have  had  for  thee, 
I  have  sent  thee  three  Manuscripts,  one  of  5  queries, 
other  is  of  15,  about  the  love  of  Jesus  &c.  The  3d  is 
why  we  cannot  come  to  the  worship  which  was  not  set 
up  by  Christ  Jesus,  which  I  desire  thee  to  communicate 
to  the  priests  to  answer  in  thy  jurisdiction,  the  Massa 
chusetts,  New  Plymouth,  or  elsewhere,  &  send  their 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO   CENTURIES  AGO.  281 

answer  in  writing  to  me.  Also  two  printed  papers  to  set 
up  in  thy  house.  It  's  reported  in  Barbadoes  that  thy 
brother  Sammuell  shall  be  sent  Governour  to  Antego." 
j  What  a  mere  dust  of  sugar  in  the  last  sentence  for  such 
a  portentous  pill !  In  his  next  letter  he  has  other  writ 
ings  of  G.  F.,  "  not  yet  copied,  which  if  thou  desire  th, 
when  I  hear  from  thee,  I  may  convey  them  unto  thee. 
Also  sence  G.  Ffox  departure  William  Edmondson  is  ar 
rived  at  this  Island,  who  having  given  out  a  paper  to  all 
in  authority,  which,  my  wife  having  copied,  I  have  here 
inclosed  presented  thee  therewith."  Books  and  manu 
scripts  were  not  all.  Coddington  was  also  glad  to  bestow 
on  Wirithrop  any  wandering  tediousness  in  the  flesh  that 
came  to  hand.  "  I  now  understand  of  John  Stubbs  free 
dom  to  visit  thee  (with  the  said  Jo  :  B.)  he  is  a  larned 
man,  as  witness  the  battle  door  *  on  35  languages,"  —  a 
terrible  man  this,  capable  of  inflicting  himself  on  three 
dozen  different  kindreds  of  men.  It  will  be  observed 
that  Coddington,  with  his  "thou  desireths,"  is  not  quite 
so  well  up  in  the  grammar  of  his  thee-and-thouing  as 
my  Lord  Coke.  Indeed,  it  is  rather  pleasant  to  see  that 
in  his  alarm  about  "the  enemy,"  in  1673,  he  backslides 
into  the  second  person  plural.  If  Winthrop  ever  looked 
over  his  father's  correspondence,  he  would  have  read  in 
a  letter  of  Henry  Jacie  the  following  dreadful  example 
of  retribution  :  "  The  last  news  we  heard  was  that  the 
Bores  in  Bavaria  slew  about  300  of  the  Swedish  forces  & 
took  about  200  prisoners,  of  which  they  put  out  the 
eyes  of  some  &  cut  out  the  tonges  of  others  &  so  sent 
them  to  the  King  of  Sweden,  which  caused  him  to  la 
ment  bytterly  for  an  hour.  Then  he  sent  an  army  & 
destroyed  those  Bores,  about  200  or  300  of  their  towns. 
Thus  we  hear."  Think  of  that,  Master  Coddington  ! 

*  The  title-page  of  which  our  learned  Marsh  has  cited  for  the  ety 
mology  of  the  vrord. 


282  NEW  ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES  AGO. 

Could  the  sinful  heart  of  man  always  suppress  the  wish 
that  a  Gustavus  might  arise  to  do  judgment  on  the  Bores 
of  Rhode  Island  1  The  unkindest  part  of  it  was  that, 
on  Coddington's  own  statement,  Winthrop  had  never 
persecuted  the  Quakers,  and  had  even  endeavored  to  save 
Robinson  and  Stevenson  in  1659. 

Speaking  of  the  execution  of  these  two  martyrs  to 
the  bee  in  their  bonnets,  John  Davenport  gives  us  a 
capital  example  of  the  way  in  which  Divine  "  judgments  " 
may  be  made  to  work  both  ways  at  the  pleasure  of  the 
interpreter.  As  the  crowd  was  going  home  from  the  hang 
ing,  a  drawbridge  gave  way,  and  some  lives  were  lost.  The 
Quakers,  of  course,  made  the  most  of  this  lesson  to  the 
pontiftces  in  the  bearing  power  of  timber,  claiming  it  as 
a  proof  of  God's  wrath  against  the  persecutors.  This 
was  rather  hard,  since  none  of  the  magistrates  perished, 
and  the  popular  feeling  was  strongly  in  favor  of  the  vic 
tims  of  their  severity.  But  Davenport  gallantly  cap 
tures  these  Quaker  guns,  and  turns  them  against  the 
enemy  himself.  "  Sir,  the  hurt  that  befell  so  many,  by 
their  own  rashness,  at  the  Draw  Bridge  in  Boston,  being 
on  the  day  that  the  Quakers  were  executed,  was  not 
without  God's  special  providence  in  judgment  &  wrath,  I 
fear,  against  the  Quakers  &  their  abettors,  who  will  be 
much  hardened  thereby."  This  is  admirable,  especially 

/  as  his  parenthesis  about  "  their  own  rashness  "  assumes 
that  the  whole  thing  was  owing  to  natural  causes.  The 
pity  for  the  Quakers,  too,  implied  in  the  "  I  fear,"  is  a 
nice  touch.  It  is  always  noticeable  how  much  more  lib 
eral  those  who  deal  in  God's  command  without  his  power 
are  of  his  wrath  than  of  his  mercy.  But  we  should 
never  understand  the  Puritans  if  we  did  not  bear  in 

I  mind  that  they  were  still  prisoners  in  that  religion  of 
Fear  which  casts  out  Love.  The  nearness  of  God  was 
oftcner  a  terror  than  a  comfort  to  them.  Yet  perhaps 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTUEIES  AGO.     283 

in  them  was  the  last  apparition  of  Faith  as  a  wonder 
worker  in  human  affairs.  Take  away  from  them  what 
you  will,  you  cannot  deny  them  that,  and  its  constant 
presence  made  them  great  in  a  way  and  measure  of 
which  this  generation,  it  is  to  be  feared,  can  have  but  a 
very  inadequate  conception.  If  men  now-a-days  find 
their  tone  antipathetic,  it  would  be  modest  at  least  to 
consider  whether  the  fault  be  wholly  theirs,  —  whether 
it  was  they  who  lacked,  or  we  who  have  lost.  Whether 
they  were  right  or  wrong  in  their  dealing  with  the  Qua 
kers  is  not  a  question  to  be  decided  glibly  after  two  cen 
turies'  struggle  toward  a  conception  of  toleration  very 
imperfect  even  yet,  perhaps  impossible  to  human  nature. 
If  they  did  not  choose  what  seems  to  us  the  wisest  way 
of  keeping  the  Devil  out  of  their  household,  they  cer 
tainly  had  a  very  honest  will  to  keep  him  out,  which  we 
might  emulate  with  advantage.  However  it.be  in  other 
cases,  historic  toleration  must  include  intolerance  among 
things  to  be  tolerated. 

The  false  notion  which  the  first  settlers  had  of  the 
savages  by  whom  the  continent  was  beflead  rather  than 
inhabited,  arose  in  part  from  what  they  had  heard  of 
Mexico  and  Peru,  in  part  from  the  splendid  exaggera 
tions  of  the  early  travellers,  who  could  give  their  readers 
an  El  Dorado  at  the  cheap  cost  of  a  good  lie.  Hence 
the  kings,  dukes,  and  earls  who  were  so  plenty  among 
the  red  men.  Pride  of  descent  takes  many  odd  shapes, 
none  odder  than  when  it  hugs  itself  in  an  ancestry  of 
filthy  barbarians,  who  daubed  themselves  for  ornament 
with  a  mixture  of  bear's-grease  and  soot,  or  colored  clay, 
and  were  called  emperors  by  Captain  John  Smith  and 
his  compeers.  The  droll  contrast  between  this  imagi 
nary  royalty  and,  the  squalid  reality  is  nowhere  exposed 
with  more  ludicrous  unconsciousness  than  in  the  follow 
ing  passage  of  a  letter  from  Fitz-John  Winthrop  to  his 


284    NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

father,  November,  1674  :  "  The  bearer  hereof,  Mr.  Dan- 
yell,  one  of  the  Royal  Indian  blood  ....  does  desire 
me  to  give  an  account  to  yourself  of  the  late  unhappy 
accident  which  has  happened  to  him.  A  little  time 
since,  a  careless  girl  playing  with  fire  at  the  door,  it  im 
mediately  took  hold  of  the  mats,  &  in  an  instant  con 
sumed  it  to  ashes,  with  all  the  common  as  well  as  his 
lady's  chamber  furniture,  &  his  own  wardrobe  &  armory, 
Indian  plate,  &  money  to  the  value  (as  is  credibly  re 
ported  in  his  estimation)  of  more  than  an  hundred 
pounds  Indian The  Indians  have  handsomely  al 
ready  built  him  a  good  house  &  brought  him  in  several 
necessaries  for  his  present  supply,  but  that  which  takes 
deepest  melancholy  impression  upon  him  is  the  loss  of 
an  excellent  Masathuset  cloth  cloak  &  hat,  which  was 
only  seen  upon  holy  days  &  their  general  sessions.  His 
journey  at  this  time  is  only  to  intreat  your  favor  &  the 
gentlemen  there  for  a  kind  relief  in  his  necessity,  having 
no  kind  of  garment  but  a  short  jerkin  which  was  chari 
tably  given  him  by  one  of  his  Common-Councilmen.  He 
principally  aims  at  a  cloak  &  hat." 

"  King  Stephen  was  a  worthy  peer, 
His  breeches  cost  him  half  a  crown." 

But  it  will  be  observed  that  there  is  no  allusion  to  any 
such  article  of  dress  in  the  costume  of  this  prince  of 
Pequot.  Some  light  is  perhaps  thrown  on  this  deficien 
cy  by  a  line  or  two  in  one  of  Williams's  letters,  where 
he  says :  "I  have  long  had  scruples  of  selling  the  Na 
tives  ought  but  what  may  tend  or  bring  to  civilizing  :  I 
therefore  neither  brought  nor  shall  sell  them  loose  coats 
nor  breeches."  Precisely  the  opposite  course  was 
deemed  effectual  with  the  Highland  Scotch,  between 
whom  and  our  Indians  there  was  a  very  close  analogy. 
They  were  compelled  by  law  to  adopt  the  usages  of 
Gallia  Uraccata,  and  sausculottism  made  a  penal  offence. 


NEW  ENGLAND   TWO   CENTURIES  AGO.  285 

What  impediment  to  civilization  Williams  had  discov 
ered  in  the  offending  garment  it  is  hard  to  say.  It  is  a 
question  for  Herr  Teufelsdrb'ck.  Royalty,  at  any  rate,  in 
our  day,  is  dependent  for  much  of  its  success  on  the  tailor. 
Williams's  opportunities  of  studying  the  Indian  charac 
ter  were  perhaps  greater  than  those  of  any  other  man 
of  his  time.  He  was  always  an  advocate  for  justice 
toward  them.  But  he  seems  to  have  had  no  better 
opinion  of  them  than  Mr.  Parkman,*  calling  them  short 
ly  and  sharply,  "wolves  endowed  with  men's  brains." 
The  same  change  of  feeling  has  followed  the  same  causes 
in  their  case  as  in  that  of  the  Highlanders,  —  they  have 
become  romantic  in  proportion  as  they  ceased  to  be  dan 
gerous. 

As  exhibitions  of  the  writer's  character,  no  letters  in 
the  collection  have  interested  us  more  than  those  of 
John  Tinker,  who  for  many  years  was  a  kind  of  steward 
for  John  Winthrop  and  his  son.  They  show  him  to 
have  been  a  thoroughly  faithful,  grateful,  and  unselfish 
servant.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  prospered  except 
in  winning  respect,  for  when  he  died  his  funeral  charges 
were  paid  by  the  public.  We  learn  from  one  of  his  let 
ters  that  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  had  a  negro  (presumably 
a  slave)  at  Paquanet,  for  he  says  that  a  mad  cow  there 
"  had  almost  spoiled  the  neger  &  made  him  ferfull  to 
tend  the  rest  of  the  cattell."  That  such  slaves  must 
have  been  rare,  however,  is  plain  from  his  constant  com 
plaints  about  the  difficulty  of  procuring  "  help,"  some 
of  which  we  have  already  quoted.  His  spelling  of  the 
word  "  ferfull  "  shows  that  the  New  England  pronuncia 
tion  of  that  word  had  been  brought  from  the  old  coun 
try.  He  also  uses  the  word  "  creatures  "  for  kine,  and 
the  like,  precisely  as  our  farmers  do  now.  There  is  one 
very  comical  passage  in  a  letter  of  the  2d  of  August, 
*  In  liis  Jesuits  in  North  America. 


286  NEW  ENGLAND  TWO   CENTURIES  AGO.         ^ 

1660,  where  he  says:  "There  hath  been  a  motion  by 
some,  the  chief  of  the  town,  (New  London)  for  my  keep 
ing  an  ordinary,  or  rather  under  the  notion  of  a  tavern, 
which,  though  it  suits  not  with  my  genius,  yet  am  almost 
persuaded  to  accept  for  some  good  grounds."  Tinker's 
modesty  is  most  creditable  to  him,  and  we  wish  it  were 
more  common  now.  No  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
suffer  so  much  as  we  from  impostors  who  keep  incon 
veniences,  "  under  the  notion  of  a  tavern,"  without  any 
call  of  natural  genius  thereto ;  none  endure  with  such 
unexemplary  patience  the  superb  indifference  of  inn 
keepers,  and  the  condescending  inattention  of  their  gen 
tlemanly  deputies.  We  are  the  thralls  of  our  railroads 
and  hotels,  and  we  deserve  it. 

Richard  Saltonstall  writes  to  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  in 
1636  :  "  The  best  thing  that  I  have  to  beg  your  thoughts 
for  at  this  present  is  a  motto  or  two  that  Mr.  Prynne 
hath  writ  upon  his  chamber  walls  in  the  Tower."  We 
copy  a  few  phrases,  chiefly  for  the  contrast  they  make 
with  Lovelace's  famous  verses  to  Althea.  Nothing 
could  mark  more  sharply  the  different  habits  of  mind 
in  Puritan  and  Cavalier.  Lovelace  is  very  charming, 
but  he  sings 

"  The  sweetness,  mercjr,  majesty, 
And  glories  of  his  King," 

to  wit,  Charles  I.  To  him  "stone  walls  do  not  a  prison 
make,"  so  long  as  he  has  "  freedom  in  his  love,  and  in 
his  soul  is  free."  Prynne's  King  was  of  another  and 
higher  kind  :  "  Career  excludit  mundum,  includit  Deum. 
Deus  est  turris  etiam  in  turre  :  turris  libertatis  in  turre 

angustice  :  Turris  quietis  in  turre  molestice Arc- 

tari  non  potest  qui  in  ipsa  Dei  infinitate  incarceratus  spa- 

tiatur Nil  crus  sentit  in  nervo  si  animus  sit  in 

ccelo  :  nil  corpus  patitur  ^n  ergastulo,  si  anima  sit  in 
Christo."  If  Lovelace  has  the  advantage  in  fancy, 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO.     287 

Prynne  has  it  as  clearly  in  depth  of  sentiment.  There 
could  be  little  doubt  which  of  the  parties  represented 
by  these  men  would  have  the  better  if  it  came  to  a  death- 
grapple. 

There  is  curiously  little  sentiment  in  these  volumes. 
Most  of  the  letters,  except  where  some  point  of  doctrine 
is  concerned,  are  those  of  shrewd,  practical  men,  busy 
about  the  affairs  of  this  world,  and  earnest  to  build 
their  New  Jerusalem  on  something  more  solid  than 
cloud.  The  truth  is,  that  men  anxious  about  their  souls 
have  not  been  by  any  means  the  least  skilful  in  provid 
ing  for  the  wants  of  the  body.  It  was  far  less  the  en 
thusiasm  than  the  common  sense  of  the  Puritans  which 
made  them  what  they  were  in  politics  and  religion. 
That  a  great  change  should  be  wrought  in  the  settlers  by 
the  circumstances  of  their  position  was  inevitable  ;  that 
this  change  should  have  had  some  disillusion  in  it,  that 
it  should  have  weaned  them  from  the  ideal  and  wonted 
them  to  the  actual,  was  equally  so.  In  1664,  not  much 
more  than  a  generation  after  the  settlement,  Williams 
prophesies  :  "  When  we  that  have  been  the  eldest  are 
rotting  (to-morrow  or  next  day)  a  generation  will  act,  I 
fear,  far  unlike  the  first  Winthrops  and  their  models  of 
love.  I  fear  that  the  common  trinity  of  the  world 
(profit,  preferment,  pleasure)  will  here  be  the  tria  omnia 
as  in  all  the  world  beside,  that  Prelacy  and  Papacy  too 
will  in  this  wilderness  predominate,  that  god  Land  will 
be  (as  now  it  is)  as  great  a  god  with  us  English  as  god 
Gold  was  with  the  Spaniards.  While  we  are  here,  no 
ble  sir,  let  us  viriliter  hoc  ar/ere,  rem  agere  humanam,  di- 
vinam,  Christianam,  which,  I  believe,  is  all  of  a  most 
public  genius,"  or,  as  we  should  now  say,  true  patriotism. 
If  Williams  means  no  play  on  the  word  humanam  and 
divinam,  the  order  of  precedence  in  which  he  marshals 
them  is  noticeable.  A  generation  later,  what  Williams 


288  NE\V    POLAND   TWO   CENTUEIES  AGO. 

had  predicted  was  in  a  great  measure  verified.  But 
what  made  New  England  Puritanism  narrow  was  what 
made  Scotch  Cameronianism  narrow,  —  its  being  se 
cluded  from  the  great  movement  of  the  nation.  Till 
16GO  the  colony  was  ruled  and  mostly  inhabited  by  Eng 
lishmen  closely  connected  with  the  party  dominant  in 
the  mother  country,  and  with  their  minds  broadened  by 
having  to  deal  with  questions  of  state  and  European 
policy.  After  that  time  they  sank  rapidly  into  provin 
cials,  narrow  in  thought,  in  culture,  in  creed.  Such  a  pe 
dantic  portent  as  Cotton  Mather  would  have  been  impossi 
ble  in  the  first  generation ;  he  was  the  natural  growth  of 
the  third,  — tjie  manifest  judgment  of  God  on  a  genera 
tion  who  thought  Words  a  saving  substitute  for  Things. 
Perhaps  some  injustice  has  been  done  to  men  like  the 
se  cond  Governor  Dudley,  and  it  should  be  counted  to 
them  rather  as  a  merit  than  a  fault,  that  they  wished 
to  bring  New  England  back  within  reach  of  the  invigo 
rating  influence  of  national  sympathies,  and  to  rescue  it 
from  a  tradition  which  had  become  empty  formalism. 
Puritanism  was  dead,  and  its  profession  had  become  a 
wearisome  cant  before  the  Revolution  of  1688  gave  it 
that  vital  force  in  politics  which  it  had  lost  in  religion. 

I  have  gleaned  all  I  could  of  what  is  morally  pictu 
resque  or  characteristic  from  these  volumes,  but  New  Eng 
land  history  has  rather  a  gregarious  than  a  personal  inter 
est.  Here,  by  inherent  necessity  rather  than  design,  was 
made  the  first  experiment  in  practical  democracy,  and 
accordingly  hence  began  that  reaction  of  the  New  World 
upon  the  Old  whose  result  can  hardly  yet  be  estimated. 
There  is  here  no  temptation  to  make  a  hero,  who  shall 
sum  up  in  his  own  individuality  and  carry  forward  by 
his  own  will  that  purpose  of  which  we  seem  to  catch  such 
bewitching  glances  in  history,  which  reveals  itself  more 
clearly  and  constantly,  perhaps,  in  the  annals  of  New 


NEW  ENGLAND  TWO   CENTURIES  AGO.  289 

England  than  elsewhere,  and  which  yet,  at  bestj  is  but 
tentative,  doubtful  of  itself,  turned  this  way  and  that  by 
chance,  made  up  of  instinct,  and  modified  by  circum 
stance  quite  as  much  as  it  is  directed  by  deliberate  fore 
thought.  Such  a  purpose,  or  natural  craving,  or  result 
of  temporary  influences,  may  be  misguided  by  a  power 
ful  character  to  his  own  ends,  or,  if  he  be  strongly  in 
sympathy  with  it,  may  be  hastened  toward  its  own  ful 
filment  ;  but  there  is  no  such  heroic  element  in  our 
drama,  and  what  is  remarkable  is,  that,  under  whatever 
government,  democracy  grew  with  the  growth  of  the 
New  England  Colonies,  and  was  at  last  potent  enough  to 
wrench  them,  and  the  better  part  of  the  continent  with 
them,  from  the  mother  country.  It  is  true  that  Jeffer 
son  embodied  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  the 
speculative  theories  he  had  learned  in  France,  but  the 
impulse  to  separation  came  from  New  England  ;  and 
those  theories  had  been  long  since  embodied  there  in  the 
practice  of  the  people,  if  they  had  never  been  formu 
lated  in  distinct  propositions. 

I  have  little  sympathy  with  declaimers  about  the  Pil 
grim  Fathers,  who  look  upon  them  all  as  men  of  grand 
conceptions  and  superhuman  foresight.  An  entire  ship's 
company  of  Columbuses  is  what  the  world  never  saw. 
It  is  not  wise  to  form  any  theory  and  fit  our  facts  to  it, 
as  a  man  in  a  hurry  is  apt  to  cram  his  travelling-bag,  with 
a  total  disregard  of  shape  or  texture.  But  perhaps  it  may 
be  found  that  the  facts  will  only  fit  comfortably  together 
on  a  single  plan,  namety,  that  the  fathers  did  have  a  con 
ception  (which  those  will  call  grand  who  regard  simpli 
city  as  a-  necessary  element  of  grandeur)  of  founding 
here  a  commonwealth  on  those  two  eternal  bases  of  Faith 
and  Work  ;  that  they  had,  indeed,  no  revolutionary  ideas 
of  universal  liberty,  but  yet,  what  answered  the  purpose 
quite  as  well,  an  abiding  'faith  in  the  brotherhood  of  man 
13  S 


290     NEW  ENGLAND  TWO  CENTURIES  AGO. 

and  the  fatherhood  of  God ;  and  that  they  did  not  so 
much  propose  to  make  all  things  new,  as  to  develop  the 
latent  possibilities  of  English  law  and  English  character, 
\  by  clearing  away  the  fences  by  which  the  abuse  of  the 
one  was  gradually  discommoning  the  other  from  the 
broad  fields  of  natural  right.  They  were  not  in  advance 
of  their  age,  as  it  is  called,  for  no  one  who  is  so  can  ever 
work  profitably  in  it ;  but  they  were  alive  to  the  highest 
and  most  earnest  thinking  of  their  time. 


LESSING. 


WHEN  Burns's  humor  gave  its  last  pathetic  flicker  in 
his  "  John,  don't  let  the  awkward  squad  fire  over  me," 
was  he* thinking  of  actual  brother-volunteers,  or  of  pos 
sible  biographers  1  Did  his  words  betray  only  the  rhyth 
mic  sensitiveness  of  poetic  nerves,  or  were  they  a  fore 
boding  of  that  helpless  future,  when  the  poet  lies  at  the 
mercy  of  the  plodder,  —  of  that  bi-voluminous  shape  in 
which  dulness  overtakes  and  revenges  itself  on  genius  at 
last  1  Certainly  Burns  has  suffered  as  much  as  most 
large-natured  creatures  from  well-meaning  efforts  to  ac 
count  for  him,  to  explain  him  away,  to  bring  him  into 
harmony  with  those  well-regulated  minds  which,  during 
a  good  part  of  the  last  century,  found  out  a  way,  through 
rhyme,  to  snatch  a  prosiriess  beyond  the  reach  of  prose. 
Nay,  he  has  been  wronged  also  by  that  other  want  of 
true  appreciation,  which  deals  in  panegyric,  and  would 
put  asunder  those  two  things  which  God  has  joined,  — • 
the  poet  and  the  man,  —  as  if  it  were  not  the  same  rash 
improvidence  that  was  the  happiness  of  the  verse  and 
the  misfortune  of  the  ganger.  But  his  death-bed  was 

*  G.  E.  LESSING.  Sein  Leben  und  seine  Werke.  Von  ADOLF 
STAHR.  Vermehrte  und  verbesserte  Volks-Ausgabe.  Dritte  Auflage. 
Berlin.  1864. 

The  Same.  Translated  by  E.  P.  EVANS,  Ph.  D.,  Professor,  &c.  in 
the  University  of  Michigan.  Boston:  W.  V.  Spencer.  1866.  2  vols. 

G.  E.  Lessing's  Sammtliche  Schriften,  herausgegeben  von  Karl 
Lachmann.  1853-57.  12  Bande. 


292  LESSING. 

at  least  not  haunted  by  the  unappeasable  apprehension 
of  a  German  for  his  biographer ;  and  that  the  fame  of 
Lessing  should  have  four  times  survived  this  cunningest 
assault  of  oblivion  is  proof  enough  that  its  base  is  broad 
and  deep-set. 

There  seems  to  be,  in  the  average  German  mind,  an 
inability  or  a  disinclination  to  see  a  thing  as  it  really  is, 
unless  it  be  a  matter  of  science.  It  finds  its  keenest 
pleasure  in  divining  a  profound  significance  in  the  most  tri 
fling  things,  and  the  number  of  mare's-nests  that  have 
been  stared  into  by  the  German  Gelehrter  through  his  spec 
tacles  passes  calculation.  They  are  the  one  object  t)f  con 
templation  that  makes  that  singular  being  perfectly  hap 
py,  and  they  seem  to  be  as  common  as  those  of  the  stork. 
In  the  dark  forest  of  aesthetics,  particularly,  he  finds 
them  at  every  turn, —  "fanno  tutto  il  loco  varo."  If 
the  greater  part  of  our  English  criticism  is  apt  only  to 
skim  the  surface,  the  German,  by  way  of  being  profound, 
too  often  burrows  in  delighted  darkness  quite  beneath  its 
subject,  till  the  reader  feels  the  ground  hollow  beneath 
him,  and  is  fearful  of  caving  into  unknown  depths  of 
stagnant  metaphysic  air  at  every  step.  The  Commen 
tary  on  Shakespeare  of  Gervinus,  a  really  superior  man, 
reminds  one  of  the  Roman  Campagna,  penetrated  under 
ground  in  all  directions  by  strange  winding  caverns,  the 
work  of  human  borers  in  search  of  we  know  not  what. 
Above  are  the  divine  poet's  larks  and  daisies,  his  incom 
municable  skies,  his  broad  prospects  of  life  and  nature  ; 
and  meanwhile  our  Teutonic  teredo  worms  his.  way  be 
low,  and  offers  to  be  our  guide  into  an  obscurity  of  his 
own  contriving.  The  reaction  of  language  upon  st}Tle, 
and  even  upon  thought,  by  its  limitations  on  the  one 
hand,  and  its  suggestions  on  the  other,  is  so  apparent  to 
any  one  who  has  made  even  a  slight  study  of  compara 
tive  literature,  that  we  have  sometimes  thought  the  Ger- 


LESSING.  293 

man  tongue  at  least  an  accessory  before  the  fact,  if 
nothing  more,  in  the  offences  of  German  literature. 
The  language  has  such  a  fatal  genius  for  going  stern- 
foremost,  for  yawing,  and  for  not  minding  the  helm  with 
out  some  ten  minutes'  notice  in  advance,  that  he  must 
be  a  great  sailor  indeed  who  can  safely  make  it  the  ve 
hicle  for  anything  but  imperishable  commodities.  Vis- 
cher's  ^Esthetik,  the  best  treatise  on  the  subject,  ancient 
or  modern,  is  such  a  book  as  none  but  a  German  could 
write,  and  it  is  written  as  none  but  a  German  could  have 
written  it.  The  abstracts  of  its  sections  are  sometimes 
nearly  as  long  as  the  sections  themselves,  and  it  is  as 
hard  to  make  out  which  head  belongs  to  which  tail,  as 
in  a  knot  of  snakes  thawing  themselves  into  sluggish  in 
dividuality  under  a  spring  sun.  The  average  German 
professor  spends  his  life  in  making  lanterns  fit  to  guide 
us  through  the  obscurest  passages  of  all  the  ologies  and 
ysics,  and  there  are  none  in  the  world  of  such  honest 
workmanship.  They  are  durable,  they  have  intensifying 
glasses,  reflectors  of  the  most  scientific  make,  capital 
sockets  in  which  to  set  a  light,  and  a  handsome  lump 
of  potentially  illuminating  tallow7  is  thrown  in.  But,  in 
order  to  see  by  them,  the  explorer  must  make  his  own 
candle,  supply  his  own  cohesive  wick  of  common-sense, 
and  light  it  himself.  And  yet  the  admirable  thorough 
ness  of  the  German  intellect !  We  should  be  ungrateful 
indeed  if  we  did  not  acknowledge  that  it  has  supplied  the 
raw  material  in  almost  every  branch  of  science  for  tho 
defter  wits  of  other  nations  to  work  on  ;  yet  we,  have  a 
suspicion  that  there  are  certain  lighter  departments  of 
literature  in  which  it  may  be  misapplied,  and  turn  into 
something  very  like  clumsiness.  Delightful  as  Jean/ 
Paul's  humor  is,  how  much  more  so  would  it  be  if  ho 
only  knew  when  to  stop  !  Ethereally  deep  as  is  his  sen 
timent,  should  we  not  feel  it  more  if  he  sometimes  gave 


294  LESSING. 

us  a  little  less  of  it,  —  if  he  would  only  not  always  deal 
out  his  wine  by  beer-measure  1  /So  thorough  is  the  Ger 
man  mind,  that  might  it  not  seem  now  and  then  to  work 
quite  through  its  subject,  and  expatiate  in  cheerful  un 
consciousness  on  the  other  side  thereof? 

With  all  its  merits  of  a  higher  and  deeper  kind,  it 
yet  seems  to  us  that  German  literature  has  not  quite 
satisfactorily  answered  that  so  long-standing  question 
of  the  French  Abbe"  about  esprit.  Hard  as  it  is  for  a  Ger 
man  to  be  clear,  still  harder  to  be  light,  he  is  more  than 
ever  awkward  in  his  attempts  to  produce  that  quality  of 
style,  so  peculiarly  French,  which  is  neither  wit  nor 
liveliness  taken  singly,  but  a  mixture  of  the  two  that 
must  be  drunk  while  the  effervescence  lasts,  and  will 
not  bear  exportation  into  any  other  language.  German 
criticism,  excellent  in  other  respects,  and  immeasurably 
superior  to  that  of  any  other  nation  in  its  constructive 
faculty,  in  its  instinct  for  getting  at  whatever  principle 
of  life  lies  at  the  heart  of  a  work  of  genius,  is  seldom 
lucid,  almost  never  entertaining.  It  may  turn  its 
light,  if  we  have  patience,  into  every  obscurest  cranny 
of  its  subject,  one  after  another,  but  it  never  flashes 
light  out  of  the  subject  itself,  as  Sainte-Beuve,  for  ex 
ample,  so  often  does,  and  with  such  unexpected  charm. 
We  should  be  inclined  to  put  Julian  Schmidt  at  the  head 
of  living  critics  in  all  the  more  essential  elements  of  his 
outfit ;  but  with  him  is  not  one  conscious  at  too  fre 
quent  intervals  of  the  professorial  grind,  —  of  that  Ger 
man  tendency  to  bear  on  too  heavily,  where  a  French 
critic  would  touch  and  go  with  such  exquisite  measure  1 
The  Great  Nation,  as  it  cheerfully  calls  itself,  is  in 
nothing  greater  than  its  talent  for  saying  little  things 
agreeably,  which  is  perhaps  the  very  top  of  mere  cul 
ture,  and  in  literature  is  the  next  best  thing  to  the  power 
of  saying  great  things  as  easily  as  if  they  were  little. 


LESSING.  295 

German  learning,  like  the  elephants  of  Pyrrhus,  is 
always  in  danger  of  turning  upon  what  it  was  intended 
to  adorn  and  reinforce,  and  trampling  it  ponderously  to 
death.  And  yet  what  do  we  not  owe  it  ]  Mastering 
all  languages,  all  records  of  intellectual  man,  it  has  been 
able,  or  has  enabled  others,  to  strip  away  the  husks  of 
nationality  and  conventionalism  from  the  literatures  of 
many  races,  and  to  disengage  that  kernel  of  human 
truth  which  is  the  germinating  principle  of  them  all. 
Nay,  it  has  taught  us  to  recognize  also  a  certain  value  » 
in  those  very  husks,  whether  as  shelter  for  the  unripe  or 
food  for  the  fallen  seed. 

That  the  general  want  of  style  in  German  authors  is 
not  wholly  the  fault  of  the  language  is  shown  by  Heine 
(a  man  of  mixed  blood),  who  can  be  daintily  light  in 
German ;  that  it  is  not  altogether  a  matter  of  race,  is 
clear  from  the  graceful  airiness  of  Erasmus  and  Reuch- 
lin  in  Latin,  and  of  Grimm  in  French.  The  sense  of 
heaviness  which  creeps  over  the  reader  from  so  many 
German  books  is  mainly  due,  we  suspect  to  the  lan 
guage,  which  seems  wellnigh  incapable  of  that  aerial  per 
spective  so  delightful  in  first-rate  French,  and  even 
English,  writing.  But  there  must  also  be  in  the  national 
character  an  insensibility  to  proportion,  a  want  of  that 
instinctive  discretion  which  we  call  tact.  Nothing  short 
of  this  will  account  for  the  perpetual  groping  of  German 
imaginative  literature  after  some  foreign  mould  in  which 
to  cast  its  thought  or  feeling,  now  trying  a  Louis  Qua- 
torze  pattern,  then  something  supposed  to  be  Shake 
spearian,  and  at  last  'going  back  to  ancient  Greece,  or 
even  Persia.  Goethe  himself,  limpidly  perfect  as  are 
many  of  his  shorter  poems,  often  fails  in  giving  artistic 
coherence  to  his  longer  works.  Leaving  deeper  quali 
ties  wholly  out  of  the  question,  Wilhelm  Meister  seems 
a  mere  aggregation  of  episodes  if  compared  with  such  a 


296  LESSING. 

masterpiece  as  Paul  and  Virginia,  or  even  with  a  happy 
improvisation  like  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield.  The  second 
part  of  Faust,  too,  is  rather  a  reflection  of  Geothe's 
own  changed  view  of  life  and  man's  relation  to  it,  than 
an  harmonious  completion  of  the  original  conception. 
Full  of  placid  wisdom  and  exquisite  poetry  it  certainly 
is  ;  but  if  we  look  at  it  as  a  poem,  it  seems  more  as  if 
the  author  had  striven  to  get  in  all  he  could,  than  to 
leave  out  all  he  might.  We  cannot  help  asking  what 
business  have  paper  money  and  political  economy  and 
geognosy  here  ?  We  confess  that  Thales  and  the  Ho- 
munculus  weary  us  not  a  little,  unless,  indeed,  a  poem  be 
nothing,  after  all,  but  a  prolonged  conundrum.  Many 
of  Schiller's  lyrical  poems  —  though  the  best  of  them 
find  no  match  in  modern  verse  for  rapid  energy,  the 
very  axles  of  language  kindling  with  swiftness  —  seem 
disproportionately  long  in  parts,  and  the  thought  too 
often  has  the  life  wellnigh  squeezed  out  of  it  in  the 
sevenfold  coils  of  diction,  dappled  though  it  be  with 
splendid  imagery. 

I      In  German  sentiment,  which  runs  over  so  easily  into 
sentimentalism,  a  foreigner  cannot  help  being  struck  with 
i  a  certain  incongruousness.     What  can  be  odder,  for  ex- 
i  ample,  than  the  mixture  of  sensibility  and  sausages  in 

!— .. ,  -**-  ' , -»" "-^         O^  

i  some  of  Goethe's  earlier  notes  to  Frau  von  Stein,  unless, 
to  be  sure,  the  publishing  them  1  It  would  appear  that 
Germans  were  less  sensible  to  the  ludicrous  —  and  we 
are  far  from  saying  that  this  may  not  have  its  compen 
satory  advantages  —  than  either,  the  English  or  the 
French.  And  what  is  the  source  of  this  sensibility,  if  it 
be  not  an  instinctive  perception  of  the  incongruous  and 
disproportionate  1  Among  all  races,  the  English  has 
ever  shown  itself  most  keenly  alive  to  the  fear  of  mak 
ing  itself  ridiculous  ;  and  among  all,  none  has  produced 
so  many  humorists,  only  one  of  them,  indeed,  so  pro* 


LESS1NG.  297 

• 

found  as  Cervantes,  yet  all  masters  in  their  several  ways. 
What  English-speaking  man,  except  Bo-swell,  could  havo 
arrived  at  Weimar,  as  Goethe  did,  in  that  absurd  Werther- 
montirung  ?  And  where,  out  of  Germany,  could  he  have 
found  a  reigning  Grand  Duke  to  put  his  whole  court  into 
the  same  sentimental  livery  of  blue  and  yellow,  leather 
breeches,  boots,  and  all,  excepting  only  Herder,  and  that 
not  on  account  of  his  clerical  profession,  but  of  his  ago  1 
To  be  sure,  it  might  be  asked  also  where  else  in  Europe 
was  a  prince  to  be  met  with  capable  of  manly  friendship 
with  a  man  whose  only  decoration  was  his  genius  1  But 
the  comicality  of  the  other  fact  no  less  remains.  Certainly 
the  German  character  is  in  no  way  so  little  remarkable 
as  for  its  humor.  If  we  were  to  trust  the  evidence  of 
Herr  Hub's  dreary  Deutsche  komische  und  humoristische 
Dichtung,  we  should  believe  that  no  German  had  even 
so  much  as  a  suspicion  of  what  humor  meant,  unless  the 
book  itself,  as  we  are  half  inclined  to  suspect,  be  a  joke 
in  three  volumes,  the  want  of  fun  being  the  real  point 
thereof.  If  German  patriotism  can  be  induced  to  find  a 
grave  delight  in  it,  we  congratulate  Herr  Hub's  publish 
ers,  and  for  ourselves  advise  any  sober-minded  man  who 
may  hereafter  "  be  merry,"  not  to  "  sing  psalms,"  but  to 
read  Hub  as  the  more  serious  amusement  of  the  two. 
There  are  epigrams  there  that  make  life  more  solemn, 
and,  if  taken  in  sufficient  doses,  would  make  it  more  pre 
carious.  Even  Jean  Paul,  the  greatest  of  German  hu 
morous  authors,  and  never  surpassed  in  comic  conception 
or  in  the  pathetic  quality  of  humor,  is  not  to  be  named 
with  his  master,  Sterne,  as  a  creative  humorist.  What 
are  Siebenkas,  Fixlein,  Schmelzle,  and  Fibel,  (a  single 
lay-figure  to  be  draped  at  will  with  whimsical  sentiment 
and  reflection,  and  put  in  various  attitudes,)  compared 
with  the  living  reality  of  Walter  Shandy  and  his  brother 
Toby,  characters  which  we  do  not  see  merely  as  puppets 


298  LESSING. 

in  the  author's  mind,  but  poetically  projected  from  it  in 
an  independent  being  of  their  own  1  Heine  himself,  the 
most  graceful,  sometimes  the  most  touching,  of  modern 
poets,  and  clearly  the  most  easy  of  German  humorists, 
seems  to  me  wanting  in  a  refined  perception  of  that  in 
ward  propriety  which  is  only  another  name  for  poetic 
proportion,  and  shocks  us  sometimes  with  an  Unflathig- 
keit,  as  at  the  end  of  his  Deutschland,  which,  if  it  make 
Germans  laugh,  as  we  should  be  sorry  to  believe,  makes 
other  people  hold  their  noses.  Such  things  have  not 
been  possible  in  English  since  Swift,  and  the  persifleur 
Heine  cannot  offer  the  same  excuse  of  savage  cynicism 
that  might  be  pleaded  for  the  Irishman. 

I  have  hinted  that  Herr  Stahr's  Life  of  Lessing  is 
not  precisely  the  kind  of  biography  that  would  have 
been  most  pleasing  to  the  man  who  could  not  conceive 
that  an  author  should  be  satisfied  with  anything  more 
than  truth  in  praise,  or  anything  less  in  criticism.  My 
respect  for  what  Lessing  was,  and  for  what  he  did,  is 
profound.  In  the  history  of  literature  it  would  be  hard 
to  find  a  man  so  stalwart,  so  kindly,  so  sincere,*  so  ca 
pable  of  great  ideas,  whether  in  their  influence  on  the  in 
tellect  or  the  life,  so  unswervingly  true  to  the  truth,  so  free 
from  the  common  weaknesses  of  his  class.  Since  Luther, 
Germany  has  given  birth  to  no  such  intellectual  athlete, 
—  to  no  son  so  German  to  the  core.  Greater  poets  she 
has  had,  but  no  greater  writer ;  no  nature  more  finely  tem 
pered.  Nay,  may  we  not  say  that  great  character  is  as 
rare  a  thing  as  great  genius,  if  it  be  not  even  a  nobler 
form  of  it  1  For  surely  it  is  easier  to  embody  fine  think 
ing,  or  delicate  sentiment,  or  lofty  aspiration,  in  a  book 
than  in  a  life.  The  written  leaf,  if  it  be,  as  some  few 
are,  a  safe-keeper  and  conductor  of  celestial  fire,  is  se- 

*  "  If  I  write  at  all,  it  is  not  possible  for  me  to  write  otherwise  than 
just  as  I  think  and  feel."  —  Lessing  to  his  father,  21st  December,  1767. 


LESSING.  299 

cure.  Poverty  cannot  pinch,  passion  swerve,  or  trial 
shake  it.  But  the  man  Lessing,  harassed  and  striving 
life-long,  always  poor  and  always  hopeful,  with  no  patron 
but  his  own  right-hand,  the  very  shuttlecock  of  fortune, 
who  saw  ruin's  ploughshare  drive  through  the  hearth 
on  which  his  first  home-fire  was  hardly  kindled,  and  who, 
through  all,  was  faithful  to  himself,  to  his  friend,  to  his 
duty,  and  to  his  ideal,  is  something  more  inspiring  for 
us  than  the  most  glorious  utterance  of  merely  intellec 
tual  power.  The  figure  of  Goethe  is  grand,  it  is  right 
fully  pre-eminent,  it  has  something  of  the  calm,  and 
something  of  the  coldness,  of  the  immortals ;  but  the 
Valhalla  of  German  letters  can  show  one  form,  in  its 
simple  manhood,  statelier  even  than  his. 

Manliness  and  simplicity,  if  they  are  not  necessary 
coefficients  in  producing  character  of  the  purest  tone, 
were  certainly  leading  elements  in  the  Lessing  who  is 
still  so  noteworthy  and  lovable  to  us  when  eighty-six 
years  have  passed  since  his  bodily  presence  vanishedj 
from  among  men.  He  loved  clearness,  he  hated  exagger 
ation  in  all  its  forms.  He  was  the  first  German  who 
had  any  conception  of  style,  and  who  could  be  full  with 
out  spilling  over  on  all  sides.  Herr  Stahr,  we  think,  is  * 
not  just  the  biographer  he  would  have  chosen  for  him-  , 
self.  His  book  is  rather  a  panegyric  than  a  biography. 
There  is  sometimes  an  almost  comic  disproportion  be 
tween  the  matter  and  the  manner,  especially  in  the  epic 
details  of  Lessing's  onslaughts  on  the  nameless  herd  of 
German  authors.  It  is  as  if  Sophocles  should  have  given 
a  strophe  to  every  bullock  slain  by  Ajax  in  his  mad  foray 
upon  the  Grecian  commissary  stores.  He  is  too  fond  of 
striking  an  attitude,  and  his  tone  rises  unpleasantly  near 
a  scream,  as  he  calls  the  personal  attention  of  heaven 
and  earth  to  something  which  Lessing  himself  would 
have  thought  a  very  matter-of-course  affair.  He  who 


300  LESSING. 

lays  it  down  as  an  axiom,  that  "genius  loves  simplicity," 
would  hardly  have  been  pleased  to  hear  the  "Letters  on 
Literature  "  called  the  "  burning  thunderbolts  of  his  an 
nihilating  criticism,"  or  the  Anti-Gotze  pamphlets,  "  the 
hurtling  arrows  that  sped  from  the  bow  of  the  immortal 
hero."  Nor  would  he  with  whom  accuracy  was  a  matter 
of  conscience  have  heard  patiently  that  the  Letters  "ap-' 
peared  in  a  period  distinguished  for  its  lofty  tone  of 
mind,  and  in  their  own  towering  boldness  they  are  a 
true  picture  of  the  intrepid  character  of  the  age."*  If 
the  age  was  what  Herr  Stahr  represents  it  to  have  been, 
where  is  the  great  merit  of  Lessing  1  He  would  have 
smiled,  we  suspect,  a  little  contemptuously,  at  Herr 
Stahr's  repeatedly  quoting  a  certificate  from  the  "  histo 
rian  of  the  proud  Britons,"  that  he  was  "the  first  critic 
in  Europe."  Whether  we  admit  or  not  Lord  Macaulay's 
•competence  in  the  matter,  we  are  sure  that  Lessing 
would  not  have  thanked  his  biographer  for  thi^soiip-.v 
ticket  to  a  ladleful  of  fame.  If  ever  a  man  stood  firmly  v 
on  liis  own  feet,  and  asked  help  of  none,  that  man  was 
Gotthold  Ephraim  Lessing. 

Herr  Stahr's  desire  to  make  a  hero  of  his  subject,  and 
his  love  for  sonorous  sentences  like  those  we  have 
quoted  above,  arc  apt  to 'stand  somewhat  in  the  way  of 
our  chance  at  taking  a  fair  measure  of  the  man,  and  see 
ing  in  what  his  heroism  really  lay.  He  furnishes  little 
material  for  a  comparative  estimate  of  Lessing,  or  for 
judging  of  the  foreign  influences  which  helped  from  time 
to  time  in  making  him  what  he  was.  Nothing  is  harder  v 
than  to  worry  out  a  date  from  Herr  Stahr's  haystacks 
of  praise  and  quotation.  Yet  dates  are  of  special  value 

*  "  I  am  sure  that  Kleist  would  rather  have  taken  another  wound 
with  him  into  his  grave  than  have/such  stuff  jabbered  over  him  (rich 
soldi  Zeug  nachschwatzen  fassen)."  Lessing  to  Gleim,  6th  September, 
1759. 


LESSING.  301 

in  tracing  the  progress  of  an  intellect  like  Lessing's, 
which,  little  actuated  by  an  inward  creative  energy,  was 
commonly  stirred  to  motion  by  the  impulse  of  other 
minds,  and  struck  out  its  brightest  flashes  by  collision 
with  them.  He  himself  tells  us  that  a  critic  should 
"  first  seek  out  some  one  with  whom  he  can  contend," 
and  quotes  in  justification  from  one  of  Aristotle's  com 
mentators,  Solet  Aristoteles  queer  ere  pugnam  in  suis  libris. 
This  Lessing  was  always  wont  to  do.  He  could  only  feel 
his  own  strength,  and  make  others  feel  it,  —  could  only 
call  it  into  full  play  in  an  intellectual  wrestling-bout. 
He  was  always  anointed  and  ready  for  the  ring,  but  with 
this  distinction,  that  he  was  no  mere  prize-fighter,  or 
bully  for  the  side  that  would  pay  him  best,  nor  even  a 
contender  for  mere  sentiment,  but  a  self-forgetful  cham 
pion  for  the  truth  as  he  saw  it.  Nor  is  this  true  of  him 
only  as  a  critic.  His  more  purely  imaginative  works  — 
his  Minna,  his  Emilia,  his  Nathan  —  were  all  written, 
not  to  satisfy  the  craving  of  a  poetic  instinct,  nor  to  rid 
head  and  heart  of  troublous  guests  by  building  them  a 
lodging  outside  himself,  as  Goethe  used  to  do,  but  to 
prove  some  thesis  of  criticism  or  morals  by  which  Truth 
could  be  served.  His  zeal  for  her  was  perfectly  unselfish. 
"  Does  one  write,  then,  for  the  sake  of  being  always  in 
the  right^  I  think  I  have  been  as  serviceable  to  Truth," 
he  says,  "  when  I  miss  her,  and  my  failure  is  the  occa 
sion  of  another's  discovering  her,  as  if  I  had  discovered 
her  myself."  *  One  would  almost  be  inclined  to  think, 
from  Herr  Stahr's  account  of  the  matter,  that  Lessing 
had  been  an  autochthonous  birth  of  the  German  soil, 
without  intellectual  ancestry  or  helpful  kindred.  That 
this  is  the  sufficient  natural  history  of  no  original  mind 
we  need  hardly  say,  since  originality  consists  quite  as 
much  in  the  power  of  using  to  purpose  what  it  finds 

*  Letter  to  Klotz,  9th  June,  1766. 


302  LESSING. 

/  ready  to  its  hand,  as  in  that  of  producing  what  is  abso- 

0  lately  new.     Perhaps  we  might  say  that  it  was  nothing 
more  than  the  faculty  of  combining  the  separate,  and 
therefore  ineffectual,  conceptions  of  others,  and  making- 
them  into  living  thought  by  the  breath  of  its  own  organ 
izing  spirit.     A  great  man  without  a  past,  if  he  be  not 
an   impossibility,  will   certainly   have   no   future.     He 
would  be  like  those  conjectural  Miltons  and  Crom wells 

1  of  Gray's  imaginary  Hamlet.     The  only  privilege  of  the 
original  man  is,  that,  like  other  sovereign  princes,  he 
has  the  right  to  call  in  the  current  coin  and  reissue  it 
stamped  with  his  own  image,  as  was  the  practice  of 
Lessing. 

Herr  Stahr's  over-intensity  of  phrase  is  less  offensive 
than  amusing  when  applied  to  Lessing's  early  efforts  in 
criticism.  Speaking  of  poor  old  Gottsched,  he  says  : 
"  Lessing  assailed  him  sometimes  with  cutting  criticism, 
and  again  with  exquisite  humor.  In  the  notice  of  Gott- 
sched's  poems,  he  says,  among  other  things,  'The  exte 
rior  of  the  volume  is  so  , handsome  that  it  will  do  great 
credit  to  the  bookstores,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  it 
will  continue  to  do  so  for  a  long  time.  But  to  give  a 
satisfactory  idea  of  the  interior  surpasses  our  powers.' 
And  in  conclusion  he  adds,  '  These  poems  cost  two  tha- 
lers  and  four  groschen.  The  two  thalers  pay  for  the 
ridiculous,  and  the  four  groschen  pretty  much  for  the 
useful.'"  Again,  he  tells  us  that  Lessing  concludes  his 
notice  of  Klopstock's  Ode  to  God  "  with  these  inimitably 
roguish  words  :  '  What  presumption  to  beg  thus  ear 
nestly  for  a  woman ! '  Does  not  a  whole  book  of  criticism 
lie  in  these  nine  words  1 "  For  a  young  man  of  twenty- 
two,  Lessing's  criticisms  show  a  great  deal  of  indepen 
dence  and  maturity  of  thought;  but  humor  he  never  had, 
and  his  wit  was  always  of  the  bluntest,  —  crushing 
rather  than  cutting.  The  mace,  and  not  the  scymitar, 


LESSING.  303 

was  his  weapon.  Let  Herr  Stahr  put  all  Lessing's  "  in 
imitably  roguish  words  "  together,  and  compare  them 
with  these  few  intranslatable  lines  from  Voltaire's  letter 
to  Rousseau,  thanking  him  for  his  Discours  sur  Flne- 
galite :  "On  n'a  jamais  employe  tant  d'esprit  a  vouloir 
nous  rendre  betes;  il  prendenviede  marcher  a  quatrepattcs 
quand  on  lit  votre  ouvrage."  Lessing  from  the  first  was 
something  far  better  than  a  wit.  Force  was  always 
much  more  characteristic  of  him  than  cleverness.  Some 
times  Herr  Stahr's  hero-worship  leads  him  into  positive 
misstatement.  For  example, ,  speaking  of  Lessing's  Pref 
ace  to  the  "  Contributions  to  the  History  and  Reform 
of  the  Theatre,"  he  tells  us  that  "his  eye  was  directed 
chiefly  to  the  English  theatre  and  Shakespeare."  Less- 
ing  at  that  time  (1749)  was  only  twenty,  and  knew  little 
more  than  the  names  of  any  foreign  dramatists  except 
the  French.  In  this  very  Preface  his  English  list  skips 
from  Shakespeare  to  Dry  den,  and  in  the  Spanish  he 
omits  Calderon,  Tirso  de  Molina,  and  Alarcon.  Accord 
ingly,  we  suspect  that  the  date  is  wrongly  assigned  to 
Lessing's  translation  of  Toda  la  Vida  es  Sueno.  His 
mind  was  hardly  yet  ready  to  feel  the  strange  charm  of 
this  most  imaginative  of  Calderon's  dramas. 

Even  where  Herr  Stahr  undertakes  to  give  us  light  on 
the  sources  of  Lessing,  it  is  something  of  the  dimmest. 
He  attributes  "Miss  Sara  Sampson"  to  the  influence 
of  the  "  Merchant  of  London,"  as  Mr.  Evans  translates 
it  literally  from  the  German,  meaning  our  old  friend, 
"George  Barn  well."  But  we  are  strongly  inclined  to 
suspect  from  internal  evidence  that  Moore's  more  recent 
"  Gamester  "  gave  the  prevailing  impulse.  And  if  Herr 
Stahr  must  needs  tell  us  anything  of  the  Tragedy  of 
Middle-Class  Life,  he  ought  to  have  known  that  on  the 
English  stage  it  preceded  Lillo  by  more  than  a  century, 
—  witness  the  "  Yorkshire  Tragedy,"  —  and  that  some- 


304  LESSING. 

thing  very  like  it  was  even  much  older  in  France.  We 
are  inclined  to  complain,  also,  that  he  does  not  bring 
out  more  clearly  how  much  Lessing  owed  to  Diderot  both 
as  dramatist  and  critic,  nor  give  us  so  much  as  a  hint  of 
what  already  existing  English  criticism  did  for  him  in 
the  way  of  suggestion  and  guidance.  But  though  we 
feel  it  to  be  our  duty  to  say  so  much  of  Herr  Stahr's 
positive  faults  and  negative  short-comings,  yet  we  leave 
him  in  very  good  humor.  While  he  is  altogether  too 
full  upon  certain  points  of  merely  transitory  importance, 
—  such  as  the  quarrel  with  Klotz,  —  yet  we  are  bound 
to  thank  him  both  for  the  abundance  of  his  extracts 
from  Lessing,  and  for  the  j  udgment  he  has  shown  in  the 
choice  of  them.  Any  one  not  familiar  with  his  writings 
will  be  able  to  get  a  very  good  notion  of  the  quality  of 
his  mind,  and  the  amount  of  his  literary  performance, 
from  these  volumes ;  and  that,  after  all,  is  the  chief 
matter.  As  to  the  absolute  merit  of  his  works  other 
than  critical,  Herr  Stahr's  judgment  is  too  much  at  tho 
mercy  of  his  partiality  to  be  of  great  value. 

Of  Mr.  Evans's  translation  we  can  speak  for  the  most 
part  with  high  commendation.  There  are  great  diffi 
culties  in  translating  German  prose  ;  and  whatever  other 
good  things  Herr  Stahr  may  have  learned  from  Lessing, 
terseness  and  clearness  are  not  among  them.  We  have 
seldom  seen  a  translation  which  read  more  easily,  or  was 
generally  more  faithful.  That  Mr.  Evans  should  nod 
now  and  then  we  do  not  wonder,  nor  that  he  should 
sometimes  choose  the  wrong  word.  WTe  have  only  com 
pared  him  with  the  original  where  we  saw  reason  for 
suspecting  a  slip  ;  but,  though  we  have  not  found  much 
to  complain  of,  we  have  found  enough  to  satisfy  us  that 
his  book  will  gain  by  a  careful  revision.  We  select  a  few 
oversights,  mainly  from  the  first  volume,  as  examples. 
On  page  34,  comparing  Lessiug  with  Goethe  on  arriving 


LESSING.  305 

at  the  University,  Mr.  Evans,  we  think,  obscures,  if  he 
does  not  wholly  lose  the  meaning,  when  he  translates 
*Leben  by  "  social  relations,"  and  is  altogether  wrong  in 
rendering  Patrizier  by  "  aristocrat."  At  the  top  of  the 
next  page,  too,  "  suspicious  "  is  not  the  word  for  beden- 
klich.  Had  he  been  writing  English,  he  would  surely 
have  said  "  questionable."  On  page  47,  "  overtrodden 
shoes  "  is  hardly  so  good  as  the  idiomatic  "  down  at  the 
heel."  On  page  104,  "  A  very  humorous  representation  " 
is  oddly  made  to  "  confirm  the  documentary  evidence." 
The  reverse  is  meant.  On  page  115,  the  sentence  be 
ginning  "the  tendency  in  both"  needs  revising.  On 
page  138,  Mr.  Evans  speaks  of  the  "  Poetical  Village- 
younker  of  Destouches."  This,  we  think,  is  hardly  the 
English  of  Le  Poete  Campagnard,  and  almost  recalls 
Lieberklihn's  theory  of  translation,  toward  which  Les- 
sing  was  so  unrelenting,  —  "  When  I  do  not  understand 
a  passage,  why,  I  translate  it  word  for  word."  On  page 
149,  "Miss  Sara  Sampson"  is  called  "  the  first  social 
tragedy  of  the  German  Drama."  All  tragedies  surely 
are  social,  except  the  "  Prometheus."  Burgerliche  Tra- 
godie  means  a  tragedy  in  which  the  protagonist  is  taken 
from  common  life,  and  perhaps  cannot  be  translated 
clearly  into  English  except  by  "  tragedy  of  middle-class 
life."  So  on  page  170  we  find  Emilia  Galotti  called  a 
"Virginia  bourgeoise"  and  on  page  172  a  hospital  be 
comes  a  lazaretto.  On  page  190  we  have  a  sentence  end 
ing  in  this  strange  fashion  :  "  in  an  episode  of  the  Eng 
lish  original,  which  Wieland  omitted  entirely,  one  of  its 
characters  nevertheless  appeared  in  the  German  tragedy." 
On  page  205  we  have  the  Seven  Years'  War  called  "  a 
bloody  process"  This  is  mere  carelessness,  for  Mr. 
Evans,  in  the  second  volume,  translates  it  rightly  "  law 
suit."  What  English  reader  would  know  what  "  You  are 
intriguing  me "  means,  on  page  228  ?  On  page  264, 


306  LESSING. 

Vol.  II.,  we  find  a  passage  inaccurately  rendered,  which 
we  consider  of  more  consequence,  because  it  is  a  quota 
tion  from  Lessing.  "  0,  out  upon  the  man  who  claims, 
Almighty  God,  to  be  a  preacher  of  Thy  word,  and  yet  so 
impudently  asserts  that,  in  order  to  attain  Thy  purposes, 
there  was  only  one  way  in  which  it  pleased  Thee  to  make 
Thyself  known  to  him  !  "  This  is  very  far  from  nur  den 
einzigen  Weg  geliabt  den  Du  Dir  gef alien  lassen  Him  kund 
zu  machen  !  The  ihm  is  scornfully  emphatic.  We  hope 
Professor  Evans  will  go  over  his  version  for  a  second 
edition  much  more  carefully  than  we  have  had  any  occa 
sion  to  do.  He  has  done  an  excellent  service  to  our  lit 
erature,  for  which  we  heartily  thank  him,  in  choosing  a 
book  of  this  kind  to  translate,  and  translating  it  so  well. 
We  would  not  look  such  a  gift  horse  too  narrowly  in  the 
mouth. 

Let  us  now  endeavor  to  sum  up  the  result  of  Les- 
sing's  life  and  labor  with  what  success  we  may. 

Gotthold  Ephraim  Lessing  was  born  (January  22, 
1729)  at  Camenz,  in  Upper  Lusatia,  the  second  child 
and  eldest  son  of  John  Gottfried  Lessing,  a  Lutheran 
clergyman.  Those  who  believe  in  the  persistent  qual 
ities  of  race,  or  the  cumulative  property  of  culture, 
will  find  something  to  their  purpose  in  his  Saxon  blood 
and  his  clerical  and  juristic  ancestry.  It  is  worth  men 
tioning,  that  his  grandfather,  in  the  thesis  for  his  doc 
tor's  degree,  defended  the  right  to  entire  freedom  of 
religious  belief.  The  name  first  comes  to  the  surface  in 
Parson  Clement  Lessigk,  nearly  three  centuries  ago,  and 
survives  to  the  present  day  in  a  painter  of  some  distinc 
tion.  It  has  almost  passed  into  a  proverb,  that  the 
mothers  of  remarkable  children  have  been  something 
beyond  the  common.  If  there  be  any  truth  in  the  the 
ory,  the  case  of  Lessing  was  an  exception,  as  might  have 
been  inferred,  perhaps,  from  the  peculiarly  masculine 


LESSING.  307 

type  of  his  character  and  intellect.  His  mother  was  in 
no  wise  superior,  but  his  father  seems  to  have  been  a 
man  somewhat  above  the  pedantic  average  of  the  pro 
vincial  clergymen  of  his  day,  and  to  have  been  a  scholar 
in  the  ampler  meaning  of  the  word.  Besides  the  clas 
sics,  he  had  possessed  himself  of  French  and  English, 
and  was  somewhat  versed  in  the  Oriental  languages. 
The  temper  of  his  theology  may  be  guessed  from  his  hav 
ing  been,  as  his  son  tells  us  with  some  pride,  one  of  "  the 
earliest  translators  of  Tillotson."  We  can  only  conjec 
ture  him  from  the  letters  which  Lessing  wrote  to  him, 
from  which  we  should  fancy  him  as  on  the  whole  a  de 
cided  and  even  choleric  old  gentleman,  in  whom  the  wig, 
though  not  a  predominant,  was  yet  a  notable  feature, 
and  who  was,  like  many  other  fathers,  permanently 
astonished  at  the  fruit  of  his  loins.  He  would  have 
preferred  one  of  the  so-called  learned  professions  for  his 
son,  —  theology  above  all,  —  and  would  seem  to  have 
never  quite  reconciled  himself  to  his  son's  distinction, 
as  being  in  none  of  the  three  careers  which  alone  were 
legitimate.  Lessing's  bearing  towards  him,  always  in 
dependent,  is  really  beautiful  in  its  union  of  respectful 
tenderness  with  unswerving  self-assertion.  When  he 
wished  to  evade  the  maternal  eye,  Gotthold  used  in  his 
letters  to  set  up  a  screen  of  Latin  between  himself  and 
her;  and  we  conjecture  the  worthy  Pastor  Primarius 
playing  over  again  in  his  study  at  Camenz,  with  some 
scruples  of  conscience,  the  old  trick  of  Chaucer's  fox  :  — 

"  Mulier  est  hominis  confusio ; 
Madam,  the  sentence  of  this  Latin  is, 
Woman  is  mannes  joy  and  mannes  bliss." 

He  appears  to  have  snatched  a  fearful  and  but  ill-con 
cealed  joy  from  the  sight  of  the  first  collected  edition 
of  his  son's  works,  unlike  Tillotson  as  they  certainly 
were.  Ah,  had  they  only  been  Opera  !  Yet  were  they 


308  LESSING. 

not  volumes,  after  all,  and  able  to  stand  on  their  own 
edges  beside  the  immortals,  if  nothing  more  ? 

After  grinding  with  private-tutor  Mylius  the  requisite 
time,  Lessing  entered  the  school  of  Camenz,  and  in  his 
thirteenth  year  was  sent  to  the  higher  institution  at 
Meissen.  We  learn  little  of  his  career  there,  except 
that  Theophrastus,  Plautus,  and  Terence  were  already 
his  favorite  authors,  that  he  once  characteristically  dis 
tinguished  himself  by  a  courageous  truthfulness,  and 
that  he  wrote  a  Latin  poem  on  the  valor  of  the  Saxon 
soldiers,  which  his  father  very  sensibly  advised  him  to 
shorten.  In  1750,  four  years  after  leaving  the  school, 
he  writes  to  his  father :  "  I  believed  even  when  I  was  at 
Meissen  that  one  must  learn  much  there  which  he  can 
not  make  the  least  use  of  in  real  life  (der  Welt),  and  I 
now  [after  trying  Leipzig  and  Wittenberg]  see  it  all  the 
more  clearly,"  —  a  melancholy  observation  which  many 
other  young  men  have  made  under  similar  circumstances. 
Sent  to  Leipzig  in  his  seventeenth  year,  he  finds  himself 
an  awkward,  ungainly  lad,  and  sets  diligently  to  perfect 
ing  himself  in  the  somewhat  unscholastic  accomplish 
ments  of  riding,  dancing,  and  fencing.  He  also  sedulously 
frequents  the  theatre,  and  wrote  a  play,  "  The  Young 
Scholar,"  which  attained  the  honor  of  representation. 
Meanwhile  his  most  intimate  companion  was  a  younger 
brother  of  his  old  tutor  Mylius,  a  young  man  of  more 
than  questionable  morals,  and  who  had  even  written  a 
satire  on  the  elders  of  Camenz,  for  which  —  over-confi- 
dently  trusting  himself  in  the  outraged  city  —  he  had 
been  fined  and  imprisoned ;  so  little  could  the  German 
Muse,  celebrated  by  Klopstock  for  her  swiftness  of  foot, 
protect  her  son.  With  this  scandalous  person  and  with 
play-actors,  more  than  probably  of  both  sexes,  did  the 
young  Lessing  share  a  Christmas  cake  sent  him  by  his 
mother.  Such  news  was  not  long  in  reaching  Camenz, 


LESSING.  309 

and  we  can  easily  fancy  how  tragic  it  seemed  in  the 
little  parsonage  there,  to  what  cabinet  councils  it  gave 
rise  in  the  paternal  study,  to  what  ominous  shaking  of 
the  clerical  wig  in  that  domestic  Olympus.  A  pious 
fraud  is  practised  on  the  boy,  who  hurries  home  thinly 
clad  through  the  winter  weather,  his  ill-eaten  Christmas 
cake  wringing  him  with  remorseful  indigestion,  to  receive 
the  last  blessing,  if  such  a  prodigal  might  hope  for  it, 
of  a  broken-hearted  mother.  He  finds  the  good  dame 
in  excellent  health,  and  softened  toward  him  by  a  cold 
he  has  taken  on  his  pious  journey.  He  remains  at  home 
several  months,  now  writing  Anacreontics  of  such  warmth 
that  his  sister  (as  volunteer  representative  of  the  com 
mon  hangman)  burns  them  in  the  family  stove;  now 
composing  sermons  to  convince  his  mother  that  "he 
could  be  a  preacher  any  day,"  —  a  theory  of  that  sacred 
office  unhappily  not  yet  extinct.  At  Easter,  1747,  he 
gets  back  to  Leipzig  again,  with  some  scant  supply 
of  money  in  his  pocket,  but  is  obliged  to  make  his  es 
cape  thence  between  two  days  somewhere  toward  the 
middle  of  the  next  year,  leaving  behind  him  some  his 
trionic  debts  (chiefly,  we  fear,  of  a  certain  Mademoiselle 
Lorenz)  for  which  he  had  confidingly  made  himself  se 
curity.  Stranded,  by  want  of  floating  or  other  capital, 
at  Wittenberg,  he  enters  himself,  with  help  from  home, 
as  a  student  there,  but  soon  migrates  again  to  Berlin, 
which  had  been  his  goal  when  making  his  hegira  from 
Leipzig.  In  Berlin  he  remained  three  years,  applying 
himself  to  his  chosen  calling  of  author  at  all  work,  by 
doing  whatever  honest  job  offered  itself, — verse,  crit 
icism,  or  translation,  — and  profitably  studious  in  a  very 
wide  range  of  languages  and  their  literature.  Above 
all,  he  learned  the  great  secret,  which  his  stalwart 
English  contemporary,  Johnson,  also  acquired,  of  being 
able  to  "  dine  heartily  "  for  threepence. 


310  LESSING. 

Meanwhile  he  continues  in  a  kind  of  colonial  depend 
ence  on  the  parsonage  at  Camenz,  the  bonds  gradually 
slackening,  sometimes  shaken  a  little  rudely,  and  always 
giving  alarming  hints  of  approaching  and  inevitable  au 
tonomy.  From  the  few  home  letters  of  Lessing  which 
remain,  (covering  the  period  before  1753,  there  are  only 
eight  in  all,)  we  are  able  to  surmise  that  a  pretty  con 
stant  maternal  cluck  and  shrill  paternal  warning  were 
kept  up  from  the  home  coop.  We  find  Lessing  defend 
ing  the  morality  of  the  stage  and  his  own  private  mor 
als  against  charges  and  suspicions  of  his  parents,  and 
even  making  the  awful  confession  that  he  does  not  con 
sider  the  Christian  religion  itself  as  a  thing  "  to  be  taken 
on  trust,"  nor  a  Christian  by  mere  tradition  so  valuable 
a  member  of  society  as  "  one  who  has  prudently  doubted, 
and  by  the  way  of  examination  has  arrived  at  conviction, 
or  at  least  striven  to  arrive."  Boyish  scepticism  of  the 
superficial  sort  is  a  common  phenomenon  enough,  but 
the  Lessing  variety  of  it  seems  to  us  sufficiently  rare  in 
a  youth  of  twenty.  What  strikes  us  mainly  in  the  let 
ters  of  these  years  is  not  merely  the  maturity  they  show, 
though  that  is  remarkable,  but  the  tone.  We  see  already 
in  them  the  cheerful  and  never  overweening  self-confi 
dence  which  always  so  pleasantly  distinguished  Lessing, 
and  that  strength  of  tackle,  so  seldom  found  in  literary 
men,  which  brings  the  mind  well  home  to  its  anchor,  en 
abling  it  to  find  holding-ground  and  secure  riding  in  any 
sea.  "  What  care  I  to  live  in  plenty,"  he  asks  gayly, 
"  if  I  only  live  1 "  Indeed,  Lessing  learned  early,  and 
never  forgot,  that  whoever  would  be  life's  master,  and 
not  its  drudge,  must  make  it  a  means,  and  never  allow  it 
to  become  an  end.  He  could  say  more  truly  than 
Goethe,  Mein  Acker  ist  die  Zeit,  since  he  not  only  sowed 
in  it  the  seed  of  thought  for  other  men  and  other  times, 
but  cropped  it  for  his  daily  bread.  Above  all,  we  find 


LESSING.  311 

Lessing  even  thus  early  endowed  with  the  power  of 
keeping  his  eyes  wide  open  to  what  he  was  after,  to  what 
would  help  or  hinder  him,  —  a  much  more  singular  gift 
than  is  commonly  supposed.  Among  other  jobs  of  this 
first  Berlin  period,  he  had  undertaken  to  arrange  the 
library  of  a  certain  Herr  Rudiger,  getting  therefor  his 
meals  and  "  other  receipts,"  whatever  they  may  have 
been.  His  father  seems  to  have  heard  with  anxiety  that 
this  arrangement  had  ceased,  and  Lessing  writes  to  him  : 
"  I  never  wished  to  have  anything  to  do  with  this  old 
man  longer  than  until  I  had  made  myself  thoroughly  ac 
quainted  with  his  great  library.  This  is  now  accom 
plished,  and  we  have  accordingly  parted."  This  was  in 
his  twenty-first  year,  and  we  have  no  doubt,  from  the 
range  of  scholarship  which  Lessing  had  at  command  so 
young,  that  it  was  perfectly  true.  All  through  his  life 
he  was  thoroughly  German  in  this  respect  also,  that  he 
never  quite  smelted  his  knowledge  clear  from  some  slag 
of  learning. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  first  Berlin  residence,  Pastor 
Primarius  Lessing,  hearing  that  his  son  meditated  a 
movement  on  Vienna,  was  much  exercised  with  fears  of 
the  temptation  to  Popery  he  would  be  exposed  to  in  that 
capital.  We  suspect  that  the  attraction  thitherward 
had  its  source  in  a  perhaps  equally  catholic,  but  less 
theological  magnet,  —  the  Mademoiselle  Lorenz  above 
mentioned.  Let  us  remember  the  perfectly  innocent 
passion  of  Mozart  for  an  actress,  and  be  comforted. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  Lessing's  life  at 
this  time,  or  any  other,  though  careless,  was  in  any  way 
debauched.  No  scandal  was  ever  coupled  with  his  name, , 
nor  is  any  biographic  chemistry  needed  to  bleach  spots ' 
out  of  his  reputation.  What  cannot  be  said  of  Wieland, 
of  Goethe,  of  Schiller,  of  Jean  Paul,  may  be  safely  af 
firmed  of  this  busy  and  single-minded  man.  The  pa- 


312  LESSING. 

rental  fear  of  Popery  brought  him  a  seasonable  supply 
of  money  from  home,  which  enabled  him  to  clothe 
himself  decently  enough  to  push  his  literary  fortunes, 
and  put  on  a  bold  front  with  publishers.  Poor  enough 
he  often  was,  but  never  in  so  shabby  a  pass  that  he  was 
forced  to  write  behind  a  screen,  like  Johnson. 

It  was  during  this  first  stay  in  Berlin  that  Lessing  was 
brought  into  personal  relations  with  Voltaire.  Through 
an  acquaintance  with  the  great  man's  secretary,  Bichier, 
he  was  employed  as  translator  in  the  scandalous  Hirschel 
lawsuit,  so  dramatically  set  forth  by  Carlyle  in  his  Life 
of  Frederick,  though  Lessing's  share  in  it  seems  to  have 
been  unknown  to  him.  The  service  could  hardly  have 
been  other  than  distasteful  to  him ;  but  it  must  have 
been  with  some  thrill  of  the  anche  io  !  kind  that  the 
poor  youth,  just  fleshing  his  maiden  pen  in  criticism, 
stood  face  to  face  with  the  famous  author,  with  whose 
name  all  Europe  rang  from  side  to  side.  This  was  in 
February,  1751.  Young  as  he  was,  we  fancy  those  cool 
eyes  of  his  making  some  strange  discoveries  as  to  the 
real  nature  of  that  lean  nightmare  of  Jesuits  and 
dunces.  Afterwards  the  same  secretary  lent  him  the 
manuscript  of  the  Siecle  de  Louis  XIV.,  and  Lessing 
thoughtlessly  taking  it  into  the  country  with  him,  it  was 
not  forthcoming  when  called  for  by  the  author.  Vol 
taire  naturally  enough  danced  with  rage,  screamed  all 
manner  of  unpleasant  things  about  robbery  and  the 
like,  cashiered  the  secretary,  and  was,  we  see  no  reason 
to  doubt,  really  afraid  of  a  pirated  edition.  This  timoj 
his  cry  of  wolf  must  have  had  a  quaver  of  sincerity  in  it.j 
Herr  Stahr,  who  can  never  keep  separate  the  Lessing  as 
he  then  was  and  the  Lessing  as  he  afterwards  became, 
takes  fire  at  what  he  chooses  to  consider  an  unworthy 
suspicion  of  the  Frenchman,  and  treats  himself  to  some 
rather  cheap  indignation  on  the  subject.  For  ourselves, 


LESSING.  313 

we  think  Voltaire  altogether  in  the  right,  and  we  respect 
Lessing's  honesty  too  much  to  suppose,  with  his  biogra 
pher,  that  it  was  this  which  led  him,  years  afterwards, 
to  do  such  severe  justice  to  Merope,  and  other  tragedies 
of  the  same  author.  The  affair  happened  in  December, 
1751,  and  a  year  later  Leasing  calls  Voltaire  a  "great 
man,"  and  says  of  his  Amalie,  that  "it  has  not  only 
beautiful  passages,  it  is  beautiful  throughout,  and  the 
tears  of  a  reader  of  feeling  will  justify  our  judgment." 
Surely  there  is  no  resentment  here.  Our  only  wonder 
would  be  at  its  being  written  after  the  Hirschel  business. 
At  any  rate,  we  cannot  allow  Herr  Stahr  to  shake  our 
faith  in  the  sincerity  of  Lessing's  motives  in  criticism, — • 
he  could  not  in  the  soundness  of  the  criticism  itself,  — • 
by  tracing  it  up  to  a  spring  at  once  so  petty  and  so 
personal. 

During  a  part  of  1752,*  Lessing  was  at  Wittenberg 
again  as  student  of  medicine,  the  parental  notion  of  a 
strictly  professional  career  of  some  kind  not  having  yet 
been  abandoned.  We  must  give  his  father  the  credit  of 
having  done  his  best,  in  a  well-meaning  paternal  fashion, 
to  make  his  son  over  again  in  his  own  image,  and  to 
thwart  the  design  of  nature  by  coaxing  or  driving  him 
into  the  pinfold  of  a  prosperous  obscurity.  But  Gott- 
hold,  with  all  his  gifts,  had  no  talent  whatever  for  con 
tented  routine.  His  was  a  mind  always  in  solution, 
which  the  divine  order  of  things,  as  it  is  called,  could 
not  precipitate  into  any  of  the  traditional  forms  of  crys- 

*  Herr  Stahr  heads  the  fifth  chapter  of  his  Second  Book,  "  Lessing 
at  Wittenberg.  December,  1751,  to  November,  1752."  But  we  never 
feel  quite  sure  of  his  dates.  The  Richier  affair  puts  Lessing  in  Berlin 
in  December,  1751,  and  he  took  his  Master's  degree  at  Wittenberg, 
29th  April,  1752.  We  are  told  that  he  finally  left  Wittenberg  "  toward 
the  end  "  of  that  year.  He  himself,  writing  from  Berlin  in  1754,  says 
that  he  has  been  absent  from  that  city  nur  ein  halbes  Jahr  since  1748, 
There  is  only  one  letter  for  1752,  dated  at  Wittenberg,  9th  June. 
14 


314  LESSING. 

tallization,  and  in  which  the  time  to  come  was  already 
fermenting.  The  principle  of  growth  was  in  the  young 
literary  hack,  and  ho  must  obey  it  or  die.  His  was  to 
the  last  a  natura  naturans,  never  a  naturata.  Lessing 
seems  to  have  done  what  he  could  to  be  a  dutiful  fail 
ure.  But  there  was  something  in  him  stronger  and 
more  sacred  than  even  filial  piety ;  and  the  good  old 
pastor  is  remembered  now  only  as  the  father  of  a  son 
who  would  have  shared  the  benign  oblivion  of  his  own 
theological  works,  if  he  could  only  have  had  his  wise 
way  with  him.  Even  after  never  so  many  biographies 
and  review  articles,  genius  continues  to  be  a  marvellous 
and  inspiring  thing.  At  the  same  time,  considering  the 
then  condition  of  what  was  pleasantly  called  literature 
in  Germany,  there  was  not  a  little  to  be  said  on  the  pa 
ternal  side  of  the  question,  though  it  may  not  seem  now 
a  very  heavy  mulct  to  give  up  one  son  out  of  ten  to 
immortality,  —  at  least  the  Fates  seldom  decimate  in 
this  way.  Lessing  had  now,  if  we  accept  the  common 
standard  in  such  matters,  "completed  his  education," 
and  the  result  may  be  summed  up  in  his  own  words  to 
/Michaelis,  16th  October,  1754:  "I  have  studied  at  the 
I  Fiirstenschule  at  Meissen,  and  after  that  at  Leipzig  and 
a  Wittenberg.  But  I  should  be  greatly  embarrassed  if  I 
•  were  asked  to  tell  ivliat"  As  early  as  his  twentieth 
year  he  had  arrived  at  some  singular  notions  as  to  the 
,  uses  of  learning.  On  the  20th  of  January,  1749,  he 
writes  to  his  mother:  "I  found  out  that  books,  indeed, 
|would  make  me  learned,  but  never  make  me  a  man" 
i  Like  most  men  of  great  knowledge,  as  distinguished 
from  mere  scholars,  he  seems  to  have  been  always  a 
rather  indiscriminate  reader,  and  to  have  been  fond,  as 
'  Johnson  was,  of  "  browsing  "  in  libraries.  Johnson  nei 
ther  in  amplitude  of  literature  nor  exactness  of  scholar 
ship  could  be  deemed  a  match  for  Lessing ;  but  they 


LESSING.  315 

were  alike  in  the  power  of  readily  applying  whatever 
they  had  learned,  whether  for  purposes  of  illustration  or 
argument.  They  resemble  each  other,  also,  in  a  kind  of 
absolute  common-sense,  and  in  the  force  with  which  they 
could  plant  a  direct  blow  with  the  whole  weight  both  of 
their  training  and  their  temperament  behind  it.  As  a 
critic,  Johnson  ends  where  Lessing  begins.  The  one  is 
happy  in  the  lower  region  of  the  understanding :  the 
other  can  breathe  freely  in  the  ampler  air  of  reason 
alone.  Johnson  acquired  learning,  and  stopped  short 
from  indolence  at  a  certain  point.  Lessing  assimilated 
it,  and  accordingly  his  education  ceased  only  with  his 
life.  Both  had  something  of  the  intellectual  sluggish 
ness  that  is  apt  to  go  with  great  strength ;  and  both  had 
to  be  baited  by  the  antagonism  of  circumstances  or 
opinions,  not  only  into  the  exhibition,  but  into  the  pos 
session  of  their  entire  force.  Both  may  be  more  properly 
called  original  men  than,  in  the  highest  sense,  original 
writers. 

From  1752  to  1760,  with  an  interval  of  something 
over  two  years  spent  in  Leipzig  to  be  near  a  good  thea 
tre,  Lessing  was  settled  in  Berlin,  and  gave  himself 
wholly  and  earnestly  to  the  life  of  a  man  of  letters.  A 
thoroughly  healthy,  cheerful  nature  he  most  surely  had, 
with  something  at  first  of  the  careless  light-heartedness 
of  youth.  Healthy  he  was  not  always  to  be,  not  always 
cheerful,  often  very  far  from  light-hearted,  but  manly 
from  first  to  last  he  eminently  was.  Downcast  he  could 
never  be,  for  his  strongest  instinct,  invaluable  to  him. 
also  as  a  critic,  was  to  see  things  as  they  really  are. 
And  this  not  in  the  sense  of  a  cynic,  but  of  one  who 
measures  himself  as  well  as  his  circumstances,  —  who 
loves  truth  as  the  most  beautiful  of  all  things  and  the 
only  permanent  possession,  as  being  of  one  substance 
with  thp  aniil  Tn  a  rnan  like  Lessincr.  whobC  character 


316  LESSING. 

is  even  more  interesting  than  his  works,  the  tone  and 
turn  of  thought  are  what  we  like  to  get  glimpses  of. 
And  for  this  his  letters  are  more  helpful  than  those  of 
most  authors,  as  might  be  expected  of  one  who  said  of 
himself,  that,  in  his  more  serious  work,  "  he  must  profit 
by  his  first  heat  to  accomplish  anything."  He  began, 
we  say,  light-heartedly.  He  did  not  believe  that  "one 
should  thank  God  only  for  good  things."  "  He  who  is 
only  in  good  health,  and  is  willing  to  work,  has  nothing 
to  fear  in  the  world."  "What  another  man  would  call 
want,  I  call  comfort."  "  Must  not  one  often  act  thought 
lessly,  if  one  would  provoke  Fortune  to  do  something 
for  him1?"  In  his  first  inexperience,  the  life  of  "the 
sparrow  on  the  house-top  "  (which  we  find  oddly  trans 
lated  "roof")  was  the  one  he  would  choose  for  himself. 
Later  in  life,  when  he  wished  to  marry,  he  was  of  another 
mind,  and  perhaps  discovered  that  there  was  something 
in  the  old  father's  notion  of  a  fixed  position.  "  The  life 
of  the  sparrow  on  the  house-top  is  only  right  good  if  one 
need  not  expect  any  end  to  it.  If  it  cannot  always  last, 
every  day  it  lasts  too  long,"  —  he  writes  to  Ebert  in 
1770.  Yet  even  then  he  takes  the  manly  view.  "Ev 
erything  in  the  world  has  its  time,  everything  may  be 
overlived  and  overlooked,  if  one  only  have  health." 
Nor  let  any  one  suppose  that  Lessing,  full  of  courage  as 
he  was,  found  professional  authorship  a  garden  of  Alci- 
noiis.  From  creative  literature  he  continually  sought 
refuge,  and  even  repose,  in  the  driest  drudgery  of  mere 
scholarship.  On  the  26th  of  April,  17G8,  he  writes  to 
his  brother  with  something  of  his  old  gayety  :  "  Thank 
God,  the  time  will  soon  come  when  I  cannot  call  a  penny 
in  the  world  my  own  but  I  must  first  earn  it.  I  am  un 
happy  if  it  must  be  by  writing."  And  again  in  May, 
1771  :  "Among  all  the  wretched,  I  think  him  the  most 
wretched  who  must  work  with  his  head,  even  if  he  is 


LESSING.  317 

not  conscious  of  having  one.  But  what  is  the  good  of 
complaining!"  Lessing's  life,  if  it  is  a  noble  example, 
so  far  as  it  concerned  himself  alone,  is  also  a  warning 
when  another  is  to  be  asked  to  share  it.  He  too  would 
have  profited  had  he  earlier  learned  and  more  constantly 
borne  in  mind  the  profound  wisdom  of  that  old  saying, 
Si  sit  prudentia.  Let  the  young  poet,  however  he  may 
believe  of  his  art  that  "  all  other  pleasures  are  not  worth 
its  pains,"  consider  well  what  it  is  to  call  down  fire  from 
heaven  to  keep  the  pot  boiling,  before  he  commit  him 
self  to  a  life  of  authorship  as  something  fine  and  easy. 
That  fire  will  not  condescend  to  such  office,  though  it 
come  without  asking  on  ceremonial  days  to  the  free  ser 
vice  of  the  altar. 

Leasing,  however,  never  would,  even  if  he  could,  have 
so  desecrated  his  better  powers.  For  a  bare  livelihood, 
he  always  went  sturdily  to  the  market  of  hack-work, 
where  his  learning  would  fetch  him  a  price.  But  it  was 
only  in  extremest  need  that  he  would  claim  that  benefit 
of  clergy.  "  I  am  worried,"  he  writes  to  his  brother 
Karl,  8th  April,  1773,  "and  work  because  working  is 
the  only  means  to  cease  being  so.  But  you  and  Vcss 
are  very'  much  mistaken  if  you  think  that  it  could  ever 
be  indifferent  to  me,  under  such  circumstances,  on  what 
I  work.  Nothing  less  true,  whether  as  respects  the 
work  itself  or  the  principal  object  wherefor  I  work.  I 
have  been  in  my  life  before  now  in  very  wretched  cir 
cumstances,  yet  never  in  such  that  I  would  have  written 
for  bread  in  the  true  meaning  of  the  word.  I  have  be 
gun  my  '  Contributions '  because  this  work  helps  me 
.  .  .  .  to  live  from  one  day  to  another."  It  is  plain  that 
he  does  not  call  this  kind  of  thing  in  any  high  sense 
writing.  Of  that  he  had  far  other  notions  ;  for  though 
he  honestly  disclaimed  the  title,  yet  his  dream  was  al 
ways  to  be  a  poet.  But  he  was  willing  to  work,  as  he 


318  LESSING. 

claimed  to  be,  because  he  had  one  ideal  higher  than  that 
of  being  a  poet,  namely,  to  be  thoroughly  a  man.  To 
ISTicolai  he  writes  in  1758  :  "All  ways  of  earning  his 
bread  are  alike  becoming  to  an  honest  man,  whether  to 
split  wood  or  to  sit  at  the  helm  of  state.  It  does  not 
concern  his  conscience  how  useful  he  is,  but  how  useful 
he  would  be."  Goethe's  poetic  sense  was  the  Minotaur 
to  which  he  sacrificed  everything.  To  make  a  study,  he 
would  soil  the  maiden  petals  of  a  woman's  soul ;  to  get 
the  delicious  sensation  of  a  reflex  sorrow,  he  would  wring 
a  heart.  All  that  saves  his  egoism  from  being  hateful 
is,  that,  with  its  immense  reaches,  it  cheats  the  sense 
into  a  feeling  of  something  like  sublimity.  A  patch  of 
sand  is  unpleasing ;  a  desert  has  all  the  awe  of  ocean. 
Lessing  also  felt  the  duty  of  self-culture  ;  but  it  was  not 
so  much  for  the  sake  of  feeding  fat  this  or  that  faculty 
as  of  strengthening  character,  —  the  only  soil  in  which 
real  mental  power  can  root  itself  and  find  sustenance. 
His  advice  to  his  brother  Karl,  who  was  beginning  to 
write  for  the  stage,  is  two  parts  moral  to  one  literary. 
"  Study  ethics  diligently,  learn  to  express  yourself  well 
and  correctly,  and  cultivate  your  own  character.  With 
out  that  I  cannot  conceive  a  good  dramatic  author." 
Marvellous  counsel  this  will  seem  to  those  who  think 
that  wisdom  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  fool's  paradise 
of  Bohemia  ! 

We  said  that  Lessing's  dream  was  to  be  a  poet.  In 
comparison  with  success  as  a  dramatist,  he  looked  on  all 
other  achievement  as  inferior  in  kind.  In  1767  ho 
writes  to  Gleim  (speaking  of  his  call  to  Hamburg)  : 
"  Such  circumstances  were  needed  to  rekindle  in  me  an 
almost  extinguished  love  for  the  theatre.  I  was  just  be 
ginning  to  lose  myself  in  other  studies  which  would 
have  made  me  unfit  for  any  work  of  genius.  My 
Laocoon  is  now  a  secondary  labor."  And  yet  he  never 


LESSING.  319 

fell  into  the  mistake  of  overvaluing  what  he  valued  so 
highly.  His  unflinching  common-sense  would  have 
saved  him  from  that,  as  it  afterwards  enabled  him  to  see 
that  something  was  wanting  in  him  which  must  enter 
into  the  making  of  true  poetry,  whose  distinction  from 
prose  is  an  inward  one  of  nature,  and  not  an  outward 
one  of  form.  While  yet  under  thirty,  he  assures  Men 
delssohn  that  he  was  quite  right  in  neglecting  poetry  for 
philosophy,  because  "  only  a  part  of  our  youth  should 
be  given  up  to  the  arts  of  the  beautiful.  We  must  prac 
tise  ourselves  in  weightier  things  before  we  die.  An  old 
man,  who  lifelong  has  done  nothing  but  rhyme,  and  an  old 
man  who  lifelong  has  done  nothing  but  pass  his  breath 
through  a  stick  with  holes  in  it,  —  I  doubt  much  whether 
such  an  old  man  has  arrived  at  what  he  was  meant  for," 
This  period  of  Lessing's  life  was  a  productive  one, 
though  none  of  its  printed  results  can  be  counted  of 
permanent  value,  except  his  share  in  the  "  Letters  011 
German  Literature."  And  even  these  must  be  reckoned 
as  belonging  to  the  years  of  his  apprenticeship  and 
training  for  the  master-workman  he  afterwards  became. 
The  small  fry  of  authors  and  translators  were  hardly 
fitted  to  call  out  his  full  strength,  but  his  vivisection  of 
them  taught  him  the  value  of  certain  structural  princi 
ples.  "  To  one  dissection  of  the  fore  quarter  of  an  ass," 
says  Haydon  in  his  diary,  "  I  owe  my  information." 
Yet  even  in  his  earliest  criticisms,  we  are  struck  with  the 
same  penetration  and  steadiness  of  judgment,  the  same 
firm  grasp  of  the  essential  and  permanent,  that  were 
afterwards  to  make  his  opinions  law  in  the  courts  of 
taste.  For  example,  he  says  of  Thomson,  that,  "  as  a 
dramatic  poet,  he  had  the  fault  of  never  knowing  when  to 
leave  ofi* ;  he  lets  every  character  talk  so  long  as  anything 
can  be  said ;  accordingly,  during  these  prolonged  con 
versations,  the  action  stands  still,  and  the  story  becomes 


320  LESSING. 

tedious."  Of  "  Roderick  Random,"  he  says  that  "  its 
author  is  neither  a  Richardson  nor  a  Fielding  ;  he  is  one 
of  those  writers  of  whom  there  are  plenty  among  the 
Germans  and  French."  We  cite  these  merely  because 
their  firmness  of  tone  seems  to  us  uncommon  in  a  youth 
of  twenty-four.  In  the  "  Letters,"  the  range  is  much 
wider,  and  the  application  of  principles  more  consequent. 
He  had  already  secured  for  himself  a  position  among  the 
literary  men  of  that  day,  and  was  beginning  to  be  feared 
for  the  inexorable  justice  of  his  criticisms.  His  "  Fa 
bles  "  and  his  "  Miss  Sara  Sampson  "  had  been  trans 
lated  into  French,  and  had  attracted  the  attention  of 
Grimm,  who  says  of  them  (December,  1754)  :  "These 
Fables  commonly  contain  in  a  few  lines  a  new  and  pro 
found  moral  meaning.  M.  Lessing  has  much  wit,  genius, 
and  invention  ;  the  dissertations  which  follow  the  Fables 
prove  moreover  that  he  is  an  excellent  critic."  In  Ber 
lin,  Lessing  made  friendships,  especially  with  Men 
delssohn,  Yon  Kleist,  Nicolai,  Gleim,  and  Ramler.  For 
Mendelssohn  and  Von  Kleist  he  seems  to  have  felt  a  real 
love  ;  for  the  others  at  most  •  a  liking,  as  the  best  ma 
terial  that  could  be  had.  It  certainly  was  not  of  the 
juiciest.  He  seems  to  have  worked  hard  and  played 
hard,  equally  at  home  in  his  study  and  Baumann's  wine- 
cellar.  He  was  busy,  poor,  and  happy. 

But  he  was  restless.  We  suspect  that  the  necessity 
of  forever  picking  up  crumbs,  and  their  occasional 
scarcity,  made  the] life  of  the  sparrow  on  the  house-top] 
less  agreeable  than  he  had  expected.  The  imagined  free 
dom  was  not  quite  so  free  after  all,  for  necessity  is  as 
short  a  tether  as  dependence,  or  official  duty,  or  what 
not,  and  the  regular  occupation  of  grub-hunting  is  as 
tame  and  wearisome  as  another.  Moreover,  Lessing  had 
probably  by  this  time  sucked  his  friends  dry  of  any  in 
tellectual  stimulus  they  could  yield  him:  and  when 


LESSING.  321 

friendship  reaches  that  pass,  it  is  apt  to  be  anything  but 
inspiring.  Except  Mendelssohn  and  Von  Kleist,  they 
were  not  men  capable  of  rating  him  at  his  true  value  ; 
and  Lessing  was  one  of  those  who  always  burn  up  the 
fuel  of  life  at  a  fearful  rate.  Admirably  dry  as  the  sup 
plies  of  Ramler  and  the  rest  no  doubt  were,  they  had 
not  substance  enough  to  keep  his  mind  at  the  high  tem 
perature  it  needed,  and  he  would  soon  be  driven  to  the 
cutting  of  green  stuff  from  his  own  wood-lot,  more  rich 
in  smoke  than  fire.  Besides  this,  he  could  hardly  have 
been  at  ease  among  intimates  most  of  whom  could  not 
even  conceive  of  that  intellectual  honesty,  that  total  dis 
regard  of  all  personal  interests  where  truth  was  concerned, 
which  was  an  innate  quality  of  Lessing's  mind.  Their 
theory  of  criticism  was,  Truth,  or  even  worse  if  possible, 
for  all  who  do  not  belong  to  our  set ;  for  us,  that  deli 
cious  falsehood  which  is  no  doubt  a  slow  poison,  but 
then  so  very  slow.  Their  nerves  were  unbraced  by  that 
fierce  democracy  of  thought,  trampling  on  all  prescrip 
tion,  all  tradition,  in  which  Lessing  loved  to  shoulder  his 
way  and  advance  his  insupportable  foot.  "  What  is 
called  a  heretic,"  he  says  in  his  Preface  to  Berengarius, 
"  has  a  very  good  side.  It  is  a  man  who  at  least  wishes 
to  see  with  his  own  eyes."  And  again,  "  I  know  not  if 
it  be  a  duty  to  offer  up  fortune  and  life  to  the  truth ; 
....  but  I  know  it  is  a  duty,  if  one  undertake  to  teach 
the  truth,  to  teach  the  whole  of  it,  or  none  at  all." 
Such  men  as  Gleim  and  Ramler  were  mere  dilettanti, 
and  could  have  no  notion  how  sacred  his  convictions  are 
to  a  militant  thinker  like  Lessing.  His  creed  as  to  the 
rights  of  friendship  in  criticism  might  be  put  in  the 
words  of  Selden,  the  firm  tread  of  whose  mind  was  like 
his  own  :  "  Opinion  and  affection  extremely  differ. 
Opinion  is  .something  wherein  I  go  about  to  give  reason 
why  all  the  world  should  think  as  I  think.  Affection  is 


322  LESSING. 

a  thing  wherein  I  look  after  the  pleasing  of  myself." 
How  little  his  friends  were  capable  of  appreciating  this 
view  of  the  matter  is  plain  from  a  letter  of  Rarnler  to 
Gleim,  cited  by  Herr  Stahr.  Lessing  had  shown  up  the 
weaknesses  of  a  certain  work  by  the  Abbe  Batteux  (long 
ago  gathered  to  his  literary  fathers  as  conclusively  as 
poor  old  Ramler  himself),  without  regard  to  the  impor 
tant  fact  that  the  Abbe's  book  had  been  translated  by  a 
friend.  Horrible  to  think  of  at  best,  thrice  horrible 
when  the  friend's  name  was  Ramler  !  The  impression 
thereby  made  on  the  friendly  heart  may  be  conceived. 
A  ray  of  light  penetrated  the  rather  opaque  substance 
of  Herr  Ramler's  mind,  and  revealed  to  him  the  danger 
ous  character  of  Lessing.  "  I  know  well,"  he  says, 
"  that  Herr  Lessing  means  to  speak  his  own  opinion, 
and  "  —  what  is  the  dreadful  inference  1  —  "  and,  by 
suppressing  others,  to  gain  air,  and  make  room  for  him 
self.  This  disposition  is  not  to  be  overcome."  *  For 
tunately  not,  for  Lessing's  opinion  always  meant  some 
thing,  and  was  worth  having.  Gleim  no  doubt  sympa 
thized  deeply  with  the  sufferer  by  this  treason,  for  he 
too  had  been  shocked  at  some  disrespect  for  La  Fontaine, 
as  a  disciple  of  whom  he  had  announced  himself. 

Berlin  was  hardly  the  place  for  Lessing,  if  he  could 
not  take  a  step  in  any  direction  without  risk  of  treading 
on  somebody's  gouty  foot.  This  was  not  the  last  time 
that  he  was  to  have  experience  of  the  fact  that  the  critic's 
pen,  the  more  it  has  of  truth's  celestial  temper,  the  more 
it  is  apt  to  reverse  the  miracle  of  the  archangel's  spear, 
and  to  bring  out  whatever  is  toadlike  in  the  nature  of 
him  it  touches.  We  can  well  understand  the  sadness 
with  which  he  said, 

"  Der  Blick  des  Forscher's  fand 
Nicht  selten  mehr  als  er  zu  finden  wiinschte." 

*  "  Ramler,"  writes  Georg  Forster,  "  1st  die  Ziererei,  die  Eigenliebc, 
die  Eitelkeit  in  ei  wrier  Person." 


LESSING.  323 

Here,  better  than  anywhere,  we  may  cite  something 
which  he  wrote  of  himself  to  a  friend  of  Klotz.  Les- 
sing,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  literally  "  suppressed " 
Klotz.  •"  What  do  yon  apprehgjrff  then,  from  me  1  The 
more  faults  and  errors  you  point  out  to  me,  so  much 
the  more  I  shall  learn  of  you  ;  the  more  I  learn  of 

you,  the  more  thankful  shall  I  be I  wish  you 

knew  me  more  thoroughly.  If  the  opinion  you  have 
of  my  learning  and  genius  (Geist)  should  perhaps 
suffer  thereby,  yet  I  am  sure  the  idea  I  would  like 
you  to  form  of  my  character  would  gain.  I  am  not 
the  insufferable,  unmannerly,  proud,  slanderous  man 
Ilerr  Klotz  proclaims  me.  It  cost  me  a  great  deal 
of  trouble  and  compulsion  to  be  a  little  bitter  against 
him."  *  Ramler  and  the  rest  had  contrived  a  nice 
little  society  for  mutual  admiration,  much  like  that 
described  by  Goldsmith,  if,  indeed,  he  did  not  con 
vey  it  from  the  French,  as  was  not  uncommon  with 
him.  " '  What,  have  you  never  heard  of  the  ad 
mirable  Brandellius  or  the  ingenious  Mogusius,  one 
the  eye  and  the  other  the  heart  of  our  University, 
known  all  over  the  world  ? '  l  Never,'  cried  the  travel 
ler  ;  '  but  pray  inform  me  what  Brandellius  is  particu 
larly  remarkable  for.'  '  You  must  be  little  acquainted 
with  the  republic  of  letters,'  said  the  other,  'to  ask  such 
a  question.  Brandellius  has  written  a  most  sublime 
panegyric  on  Mogusius.'  'And,  prithee,  what  has  Mo 
gusius  done  to  deserve  so  great  a  favor  1'  i  He  has 
written  an  excellent  poem  in  praise  of  Brandellius.'  " 
Leasing  was  not  the  man  who  could  narrow  himself  to 
the  proportions  of  a  clique ;  lifelong  he  was  the  terror 
of  the  Brandellii  and  Mogusii,  and,  at  the  signal  given 
by  him, 

*  Lcssing  to  Von  Murr,  25th  November,  1768.    The  whole  letter  is 
well  worth  reading. 


"324  LESSIXG. 

"  They,  but  now  Avho  seemed 
In  bigness  to  surpass  Earth's  giant  sons, 
'  Now  less  than  smallest  dwarfs  in  narrow  room 
Throng  numberless." 

Besides  whatever  other  reasons  Lessing  may  have  had 
for  leaving  Berlin,  we  fancy  that  his  having  exhausted 
whatever  means  it  had  of  helping  his  spiritual  growth 
was  the  chief.  Nine  years  later,  he  gave  as  a  reason  for 
not  wishing  to  stay  long  in  Brunswick,  "  Xot  that  I  do 
not  like  Brunswick,  but  because  nothing  comes  of  being 
long  in  a  place  which  one  likes."*  Whatever  the  rea 
son?  Lessing,  in  1760,  left  Berlin  for  Breslau,  where  the 
post  of  secretary  had  been  offered  him  under  Frederick's 
tough  old  General  Tauentzien.  "  I  will  spin  myself  in 
for  a  while  like  an  ugly  worm,  that  I  may  be  able  to 
come  to  light  again  as  a  brilliant  winged  creature,"  says 
his  diary.  Shortly  after  his  leaving  Berlin,  he  was 
chosen  a  member  of  the  Academy  of  Sciences  there. 
Herr  Stahr,  who  has  no  little  fondness  for  the  foot-light 
style  of  phrase,  says,  "  It  may  easily  be  imagined  that 
he  himself  regarded  his  appointment  as  an  insult  rather 
than  as  an  honor."  Lessing  himself  merely  says  that  it 
was  a  matter  of  indifference  to  him,  which  is  much  more 
in  keeping  with  his  character  and  with  the  value  of  the 
intended  honor. 

The  Seven  Years'  War  began  four  years  before  Lessing 
took  up  his  abode  in  Breslau,  and  it  may  be  asked  how 
he,  as  a  Saxon,  was  affected  by  it.  We  might  answer, 
hardly  at  all.  His  position  was  that  of  armed  neu 
trality.  Long  ago  at  Leipzig  he  had  been  accused  of 
Prussian  leanings  ;  now  in  Berlin  he  was  thought  too 
Saxon.  Though  he  disclaimed  any  such  sentiment  as 

*  A  favorite  phrase  of  his,  which  Egbert  has  preserved  for  us  with 
Us  Saxon  accent,  was,  Es  kommt  (loch  nisclit  dabey  lieraus,  imp1  y ing 
lhat  one  might  do  something  better  for  a  constancy  than  shearing 
swine. 


LESSING.  325 

patriotism,  and  called  himself  a  cosmopolite,  it  is  plain 
enough  that  his  position  was  simply  that  of  a  German. 
Love  of  country,  except  in  a  very  narrow  parochial  way, 
was  as  impossible  in  Germany  then  as  in  America  during 
the  Colonial  period.  Lessing  himself,  in  fhe  latter  years 
of  his  life,  was  librarian  of  one  of  those  petty  princelets 
who  sold  their  subjects  to  be  shot  at  in  America,  — 
creatures  strong  enough  to  oppress,  too  weak  to  protect 
their  people.  Whoever  would  have  found  a  Germany  to 
love  must  have  pieced  it  together  as  painfully  as  Isis 
did  the  scattered  bits  of  Osiris.  Yet  he  says  that  "  the 
true  patriot  is  by  no  means  extinguished  "  in  him.  It 
was  the  noisy  ones  that  he  could  not  abide ;  and,  writing 
'to  Gleim  about  his  "  Grenadier  "  verses,  he  advises  him 
to  soften  the  tone  of  them  a  little,  he  himself  being  a  "de 
clared  enemy  of  imprecations,"  which  he  would  leave  al 
together  to  the  clergy.  We  think  Herr  Stahr  makes  too 
much  of  these  anti-patriot  flings  of  Lessing,  which,  with 
a  single  exception,  occur  in  his  letters  to  Gleim,  and  with 
reference  to  a  kind  of  verse  that  could  not  but  be  dis 
tasteful  to  him,  as  needing  no  more  brains  than  a  drum, 
nor  other  inspiration  than  serves  a  trumpet.  Lessing 
undoubtedly  had  better  uses  for  his  breath  than  to  spend 
it  in  shouting  for  either  side  in  this  "  bloody  lawsuit," 
as  he  called  it,  in  which  he  was  not  concerned.  He 
showed  himself  German  enough,  and  in  the  right  way, 
in  his  persistent  warfare  against  the  tyranny  of  French 
taste. 

He  remained  in  Breslau  the  better  part  of  five  years, 
studying  life  in  new  phases,  gathering  a  library,  which, 
as  commonly  happens,  he  afterwards  sold  at  great  loss, 
and  writing  his  Minna  and  his  Laocoon.  He  accompa 
nied  Tauentzien  to  the  siege  of  Schweidnitz,  where  Fred 
erick  was  present  in  person.  He  seems  to  have  lived  a 
rather  free-and-easy  life  during  his  term  of  office,  kept 


32G  LESSIXG. 

shockingly  late  hours,  and  learned,  among  other  things, 
to  gamble, — a  fact  for  which  Herr  Stahr  thinks  it  need 
ful  to  account  in  a  high  philosophical  fashion.  We  pre 
fer  to  think  that  there  are  some  motives  to  which  re 
markable  men  are  liable  in  common  with  the  rest  of 
mankind,  and  that  they  may  occasionally  do  a  thing 
merely  because  it  is  pleasant,  without  forethought  of 
medicinal  benefit  to  the  mind.  Lessing's  friends  (whose 
names  were  not,  as  the  reader  might  be  tempted  to  sup 
pose,  Eliphaz,  Bildad,  and  Zophar)  expected  him  to  make 
something  handsome  out  of  his  office  ;  but  the  pitiful 
result  of  those  five  years  of  opportunity  was  nothing 
more  than  an  immortal  book.  Unthrifty  Lessing,  to 
have  been  so  nice  about  your  fingers,  (and  so  near  the 
mint,  too,)  when  your  general  was  wise  enough  to  make 
his  fortune  !  As  if  ink-stains  were  the  only  ones  that 
would  wash  out,  and  no  others  had  ever  been  covered 
with  white  kid  from  the  sight  of  all  reasonable  men!  In 
July,  17G4,  he  had  a  violent  fever,  which  he  turned  to 
account  in  his  usual  cheerful  way  :  "  The  serious  epoch 
of  my  life  is  drawing  nigh.  I  am  beginning  to  become 
a  man,  and  flatter  myself  that  in  this  burning  fever  I 
have  raved  away  the  last  remains  of  my  youthful  follies. 
Fortunate  illness!"  He  had  never  intended  to  bind  him 
self  to  an  official  career.  To  his  father  he  writes :  "I  have 
more  than  once  declared  that  my  present  engagement 
could  not  continue  long,  that  I  have  not  given  up  my 
old  plan  of  living,  and  that  I  am  more  than  ever  resolved 
to  withdraw  from  any  service  that  is  not  wholly  to  my 
mind.  I  have  passed  the  middle  of  my  life,  and  can 
think  of  nothing  that  could  compel  me  to  make  myself  a 
slave  for  the  poor  remainder  of  it.  I  write  you  this, 
dearest  father,  and  must  write  you  this,  in  order  that 
you  may  not  be  astonished  if,  before  long,  you  should 
see  me  once  more  very  far  removed  from  all  hopes  of,  or 


LESSING.  327 

claims  to,  a  settled  prosperity,  as  it  is  called."  Before 
the  middle  of  the  next  year  he  was  back  in  Berlin  again. 
There  he  remained  for  nearly  two  years,  trying  the 
house-top  way  of  life  again,  but  with  indifferent  success, 
as  we  have  reason  to  think.  Indeed,  when  the  metaphor 
resolves  itself  into  the  plain  fact  of  living  just  on  the 
other  side  of  the  roof,  —  in  the  garret,  namely,  —  and 
that  from  hand  to  mouth,  as  was  Lessing's  case,  we  need 
not  be  surprised  to  find  him  gradually  beginning  to  see 
something  more  agreeable  in  a  fixirtes  Gluclt  than  he  had  f 
once  been  willing  to  allow.  At  any  rate,  he  was  willing, 
and  even  heartily  desirous,  that  his  friends  should  suc 
ceed  in  getting  for  him  the  place  of  royal  librarian.  But 
Frederick,  for  some  unexplained  reason,  would  not  ap 
point  him.  Herr  Stahr  thinks  it  had  something  to  do 
with  the  old  Siecle  manuscript  business.  But  this  seems 
improbable,  for  Voltaire's  wrath  was  not  directed  against 
Lessing  :  and  even  if  it  had  been,  the  great  king  could 
hardly  have  carried  the  name  of  an  obscure  German  au 
thor  in  his  memory  through  all  those  anxious  and  war 
like  years.  Whatever  the  cause,  Lessing  early  in  1767 
accepts  the  position  of  Theatrical  Manager  at  Hamburg, 
as  usual  not  too  much  vexed  with  disappointment,  but 
quoting  gayly 

"  Quod  non  dant  proceres,  dabit  histrio." 

Like  Burns,  he  was  always  "  contented  wi'  little  and 
canty  wi'  mair."     In  connection  with  his  place  as  Man 
ager  he  was  to  write  a  series  of  dramatic  essays  and  crit 
icisms.     It  is  to  this  we  owe  the  Dramaturgie,  —  next 
to  the  Laocoon  the  most  valuable  of  his  works.     But  '*. 
Lessing  —  though  it  is  plain  that  he  made  his  hand  as  j 
light  as  he  could,  and  wrapped  his  lash  in  velvet  —  soon 
found  that  actors  had  no  more  taste  for  truth  than  au 
thors.     He  was  obliged  to  drop  his  remarks  on  the  spe- 


328  LESSING. 

cial  merits  or  demerits  of  players,  and  to  confine  himself 
to  those  of  the  pieces  represented.  By  this  his  work 
gained  in  value  ;  and  the  latter  part  of  it,  written  with 
out  reference  to  a  particular  stage,  and  devoted  to  the 
discussion  of  those  general  principles  of  dramatic  art  on 
which  he  had  meditated  long  and  deeply,  is  far  weightier 
than  the  rest.  There  are  few  men  who  can  put  forth 
all  their  muscle  in  a  losing  race,  and  it  is  characteristic 
of  Lessing  that  what  he  wrote  under  the  dispiritment 
of  failure  should  be  the  most  lively  and  vigorous.  Cir 
cumstances  might  be  against  him,  but  he  was  incapable 
of  believing  that  a  cause  could  be  lost  which  had  once 
enlisted  his  conviction. 

The  theatrical  enterprise  did  not  prosper  long ;  but 
Lessing  had  meanwhile  involved  himself  as  partner  in  a 
publishing  business  which  harassed  him  while  it  lasted, 
and  when  it  failed,  as  was  inevitable,  left  him  hampered 
with  debt.  Help  came  in  his  appointment  (1770)  to  take 
charge  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick's  library  at  Wolfenbiit- 
tel,  with  a  salary  of  six  hundred  thalers  a  year.  This 
was  the  more  welcome,  as  he  soon  after  was  betrothed 
with  Eva  Konig,  widow  of  a  rich  manufacturer.*  Her 
husband's  affairs,  however,  had  been  left  in  confusion, 
and  this,  with  Lessing's  own  embarrassments,  prevented 
their  being  married  till  October,  1776.  Eva  Konig  was 

*  I  find  surprisingly  little  about  Lessing  in  such  of  the  contempo 
rary  correspondence  of  German  literary  men  as  I  have  read.  A  let 
ter  of  Boie  to  Merck  (10  April,  1775)  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  him.  '•'  Do 
you  know  that  Lessing  will  probably  marry  Eeiske's  widow  and  come 
to  Dresden  in  place  of  Hagedorn  ?  The  restless  spirit !  How  he  Avill 

get  along  with  the  artists,  half  of  them,  too,  Italians,  is  to  be  seen 

Liffert  and  he  have  met  and  parted  good  friends.  He  has  worn  ever 
since  on  his  finger  the  ring  with  the  skeleton  and  butterfly  which  Lif 
fert  gave  him.  He  is  reported  to  be  much  dissatisfied  with  the  theat 
rical  filibustering  of  Goethe  and  Lenz,  especially  with  the  remarks  on 
the  drama  in  which  so  little  respect  is  shown  for  his  Aristotle,  and  th«» 
Leipzig  folks  are  said  to  be  greatly  rejoiced  at  getting  such  an  ally-" 


LESSING.  329 

every  way  worthy  of  him.  Clever,  womanly,  discreet, 
with  just  enough  coyness  of  the  will  to  be  charming 
when  it  is  joined  with  sweetness  and  good  sense,  she  was 
the  true  helpmate  of  such  a  man,  —  the  serious  compan 
ion  of  his  mind  and  the  playfellow  of  his  affections. 
There  is  something  infinitely  refreshing  to  me  in  the 
love-letters  of  these  two  persons.  Without  wanting  sen 
timent,  there  is  such  a  bracing  air  about  them  as  breathes 
from  the  higher  levels  and  strong-holds  of  the  soul. 
They  show  that  self-possession  which  can  alone  reserve 
to  love  the  power  of  new  self-surrender,  —  of  never  cloy 
ing,  because  never  wholly  possessed.  Here  is  no  inva> 
sion  and  conquest  of  the  weaker  nature  by  the  stronger, 
but  an  equal  league  of  souls,  each  in  its  own  realm  still 
sovereign.  Turn  from  such  letters  as  these  to  those  of 
St.  Preux  and  Julie,  and  you  are  stifled  with  the  heavy 
perfume  of  a  demirep's  boudoir,  —  to  those  of  Herder  to 
his  Caroline,  and  you  sniff  no  doubtful  odor  of  profes 
sional  unction  from  the  sermon-case.  Manly  old  Dr. 
Johnson,  who  could  be  tender  and  true  to  a  plain  woman, 
knew  very  well  what  he  meant  when  he  wrote  that  sin 
gle  poetic  sentence  of  his,  —  "  The  shepherd  in  Virgil 
grew  at  last  acquainted  with  Love,  and  found  him  to  be 
a  native  of  the  rocks." 

In  January,  1778,  Lessing's  wife  died  from  the  effects 
of  a  difficult  childbirth.  The  child,  a  boy,  hardly  sur 
vived  its  birth.  The  few  words  wrung  out  of  Leasing 
by  this  double  sorrow  are  to  me  as  deeply  moving  as  any 
thing  in  tragedy.  "  I  wished  for  once  to  be  as  happy 
(es  so  gut  haben)  as  other  men.  But  it  has  gone  ill 
with  me  !  "  "  And  I  was  so  loath  to  lose  him,  this  son  !  " 
"  My  wife  is  dead  ;  and  I  have  had  this  experience  also. 
I  rejoice  that  I  have  not  many  more  such  experiences 
left  to  make,  and  am  quite  cheerful."  "  If  you  had 
known  her  !  But  they  say  that  to  praise  one's  wife  is 


330  LESSING. 

self-praise.  Well,  then,  I  say  no  more  of  her  !  But  if 
you  had  known  her  !  "  Quite  cheerful !  On  the  10th  of 
August  he  writes  to  Elise  Reimarus,  —  he  is  writing  to 
a  woman  now,  an  old  friend  of  his  and  his  wife,  and  will 
be  less  restrained  :  "  I  am  left  here  all  alone.  I  have 
not  a  single  friend  to  whom  I  can  wholly  confide  myself. 
....  How  often  must  I  curse  my  ever  wishing  to  be 
for  once  as  happy  as  other  men !  How  often  have  I 
wished  myself  back  again  in  my  old,  isolated  condition, 
• —  to  be  nothing,  to  wish  nothing,  to  do  nothing,  but 
what  the  present  moment  brings  with  it !  .  .  .  .  Yet  I 
am  too  proud  to  think  myself  unhappy.  I  just  grind 
my  teeth,  and  let  the  boat  go  as  pleases  wind  and  waves. 
Enough  that  I  will  not  overset  it  myself."  It  is  plain 
from  this  letter  that  suicide  had  been  in  his  mind,  and, 
with  his  antique  way  of  thinking  on  many  subjects,  he 
would  hardly  have  looked  on  it  as  a  crime.  But  he  was 
too  brave  a  man  to  throw  up  the  sponge  to  fate,  and  had 
work  to  do  yet.  Within  a  few  .days  of  his  wife's  death 
he  wrote  to  Eschenburg  :  "  I  am  right  heartily  ashamed 
if  my  letter  betrayed  the  least  despair.  Despair  is  not 
nearly  so  much  my  failing  as  levity,  which  often  ex 
presses  itself  with  a  little  bitterness  and  misanthropy." 
A  stoic,  not  from  insensibility  or  cowardice,  as  so  many 
are,  but  from  stoutness  of  heart,  he  blushes  at  a  mo 
ment's  abdication  of  self-command.  And  he  will  not 
roil  the  clear  memory  of  his  love  with  any  tinge  of  the 
sentimentality  so  much  the  fashion,  and  to  be  had  so 
cheap,  in  that  generation.  There  is  a  moderation  of  sin 
cerity  peculiar  to  Lessing  in  the  epithet  of  the  following 
sentence  :  "  How  dearly  must  I  pay  for  the  single  year 
I  have  lived  with  a  sensible  wife  ! "  Werther  had  then 
been  published  four  years.  Lessing's  grief  has  that  pa- 
/  thos  which  he  praised  in  sculpture,  —  he  may  writhe, 
but  he  must  not  scream.  Nor  is  this  a  new  thin  with 


LESSING.  331 

him.  On  the  death  of  a  younger  brother,  he  wrote  to 
his  father,  fourteen  years  before  :  "  Why  should  those 
who  grieve  communicate  their  grief  to  each  other  pur 
posely  to  increase  it  ]  ....  Many  mourn  in  death  what 
they  loved  not  living.  I  will  love  in  life  what  nature 
bids  me  love,  and  after  death  strive  to  bewail  it  as  little 
as  T  can." 

We  think  Herr  Stahr  is  on  his  stilts  again  when  he 
speaks  of  Lessing's  position  at  Wolfenbiittel.  He  calls 
it  an  "assuming  the  chains  of  feudal  service,  being 
buried  in  a  corner,  a  martyrdom  that  consumed  the  best 
powers  of  his  mind  and  crushed  him  in  body  and  spirit 
forever."  To  crush  forever  is  rather  a  strong  phrase, 
Herr  Stahr,  to  apply  to  the  spirit,  if  one  must  ever  give 
heed  to  the  sense  as  well  as  the  sound  of  what  one  is 
writing.  \  But  eloquence  has  no  bowels  for  its  victims^  ' 
We  have  no  doubt  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  meant  well 
by  Lessing,  and  the  salary  he  paid  him  was  as  large  as 
he  would  have  got  from  the  frugal  Frederick.  But  one 
whose  trade  it  was  to  be  a  Duke  could  hardly  have  had 
much  sympathy  with  his  librarian  after  he  had  once  found 
out  what  he  really  was.  For  even  if  he  was  not,  as  Herr 
Stahr  affirms,  a  republican,  and  we  doubt  very  much  if 
he  was,  yet  he  was  not  a  man  who  could  play  with  ideas 
in  the  light  French  fashion.  At  the  ardent  touch  of 
his  sincerity,  they  took  fire,  and  grew  dangerous  to  what 
is  called  the  social  fabric.  The  logic  of  wit,  with  its 
momentary  flash,  is  a  very  different  thing  from  that  con 
sequent  logic  of  thought,  pushing  forward  its  deliberate 
sap  day  and  night  with  a  fixed  object,  which  belonged  to 
Lessing.  The  men  who  attack  abuses  are  not  so  much 
to  be  dreaded  by  the  reigning  house  of  Superstition  as 
those  who,  as  Dante  says,  syllogize  hateful  truths.  As 
for  "  the  chains  of  feudal  service,"  they  might  serve  a 
Fenian  Head-Centre  on  a  pinch,  but  are  wholly  out  of 


332  LESSING. 

place  here.  The  slavery  that  Lessing  had  really  taken 
on  him  was  that  of  a  great  library,  an  Alcina  that  could 
always  too  easily  witch  him  away  from  the  more  serious 
duty  of  his  genius.  That  a  mind  like  his  could  be 
buried  in  a  corner  is  mere  twaddle,  and  of  a  kind  that 
has  done  great  wrong  to  the  dignity  of  letters.  Where- 
ever  Lessing  sat,  was  the  head  of  the  table.  That  he 
suffered  at  Wolfenbiittel  is  true ;  but  was  it  nothing  to 
be  in  love  and  in  debt  at  the  same  time,  and  to  feel  that 
his  fruition  of  the  one  must  be  postponed  for  uncertain 
years  by  his  own  folly  in  incurring  the  other  1  If  the 
sparrow-life  must  end,  surely  a  wee  bush  is  better  than 
nae  beild.  One  cause  of  Lessing's  occasional  restless 
ness  and  discontent  Herr  Stahr  has  failed  to  notice.  It 
is  evident  from  many  passages  in  his  letters  that  he  had 
his  share  of  the  hypochondria  which  goes  with  an  im 
aginative  temperament.  But  in  him  it  only  serves  to 
bring  out  in  stronger  relief  his  deep-rooted  manliness. 
He  spent  no  breath  in  that  melodious  whining  which, 
beginning  with  Rousseau,  has  hardly  yet  gone  out  of 
fashion.  Work  of  some  kind  was  his  medicine  for  the 
blues,  —  if  not  always  of  the  kind  he  would  have  chosen, 
then  the  best  that  was  to  be  had  ;  for  the  useful,  too, 
had  for  him  a  sweetness  of  its  own.  Sometimes  he 
found  a  congenial  labor  in  rescuing,  as  he  called  it,  the 
memory  of  some  dead  scholar  or  thinker  from  the  wrongs 
I  of  ignorance  or  prejudice  or  falsehood  •  sometimes  in 
fishing  a  manuscript  out  of  the  ooze  of  oblivion,  and 
giving  it,  after  a  critical  cleansing,  to  the  world.  Now 
and  then  he  warmed  himself  and  kept  his  muscle  in 
trim  with  buffeting  soundly  the  champions  of  that  shal 
low  artificiality  and  unctuous  wordiness,  one  of  which 
passed  for  orthodox  in  literature,  and  the  other  in  the 
ology.  True  religion  and  creative  genius  were  both  so 
beautiful  to  him  that  he  could  never  abide  the  mediocre 


LESSING.  333 

counterfeit  of  either,  and  he  who  put  so  much  of  his 
own  life  into  all  he  wrote  could  not  but  hold  all  scripture 
sacred  in  which  a  divine  soul  had  recorded  itself.  It 
would  be  doing  Lessing  great  wrong  to  confound  his  con 
troversial  writing  with  the  paltry  quarrels  of  authors. 
His  own  personal  relations  enter  into  them  surprisingly 
little,  for  his  quarrel  was  never  with  men,  but  with 
falsehood,  cant,  and  misleading  tradition,  in  whomsoever 
incarnated.  Save  for  this,  they  were  no  longer  reada 
ble,  and  might  be  relegated  to  that  herbarium  of  Bil 
lingsgate  gathered  by  the  elder  Disraeli. 

So  far  from  being  "  crushed  in  spirit "  at  Wolfenbiit- 
tel,  the  years  he  spent  there  were  among  the  most  pro 
ductive  of  his  life.  "Emilia  Galotti,"  begun  in  1758, 
was  finished  there  and  published  in  1771.  The  contro 
versy  with  Gotze,  by  far  the  most  important  he  was  en 
gaged  in,  and  the  one  in  which  he  put  forth  his  maturest 
powers,  was  carried  on  thence.  His  "  Nathan  the  Wise  " 
(1779),  by  which  almost  alone  he  is  known  as  a  poet 
outside  of  Germany,  was  conceived  and  composed  there. 
The  last  few  years  of  his  life  were  darkened  by  ill-health 
and  the  depression  which  it  brings.  His  Nathan  had 
not  the  success  he  hoped.  It  is  sad  to  see  the  strong, 
self-sufficing  man  casting  about  for  a  little  sympathy, 
even  for  a  little  praise.  "It  is  really  needful  to  me  that 
you  should  have  some  small  good  opinion  of  it  [Nathan], 
in  order  to  make  me  once  more  contented  with,  myself," 
he  writes  to  Elise  Reimarus  in  May,  1779.  That  he  was 
weary  of  polemics,  and  dissatisfied  with  himself  for  let 
ting  them  distract  him  from  better  things,  appears  from 
his  last  pathetic  letter  to  the  old  friend  he  loved  and 
valued  most, — Mendelssohn.  "And  in  truth,  dear 
friend,  I  sorely  need  a  letter  like  yours  from  time  to 
time,  if  I  am  not  to  become  wholly  out  of  humor.  I 
think  you  do  not  know  me  as  a  man  that  has  a  very  hot 


334  LESSING. 

hunger  for  praise.  But  the  coldness  with  which  the 
world  is  wont  to  convince  certain  people  that  they  do 
not  suit  it,  if  not  deadly,  yet  stiffens  one  with  chill.  I 
am  not  astonished  that  all  I  have  written  lately  does  not 

please  you At  best,  a  passage  here  and  there  may 

have  cheated  you  by  recalling  our  better  days.  I,  too, 
was  then  a  sound,  slim  sapling,  and  am  now  such  a  rot 
ten,  gnarled  trunk  !  "  This  was  written  on  the  19th  of 
December,  1780;  and  on  the  15th  of  February,  1781, 
Lessing  died,  not  quite  fifty-two  years  old.  Goethe  was 
then  in  his  thirty-second  year,  and  Schiller  ten  years 
younger. 

t 

Of  Lessing's  relation  to  metaphysics  the  reader  will 
find  ample  discussion  in  Herr  Stahr's  volumes.  We  are 
not  particularly  concerned  with  them,  because  his  in 
terest  in  such  questions  was  purely  speculative,  and 
because  he  was  more  concerned  to  exercise  the  powers 
of  his  mind  than  to  analyze  them.  His  chief  business, 
his  master  impulse  always,  was  to  be  a  man  of  letters  in 
the  narrower  sense  of  the  term.  Even  into  theology  he 
only  made  occasional  raids  across  the  border,  as  it  were, 
and  that  not  so  much  with  a  purpose  of  reform  as  in 
defence  of  principles  which  applied  equally  to  the  whole 
domain  of  thought.  He  had  even  less  sympathy  with 
heterodoxy  than  with  orthodoxy,  and,  so  far  from  join 
ing  a  party  or  wishing  to  form  one,  would  have  left 
belief  a  matter  of  choice  to  the  individual  conscience. 
"  From  the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  hate  all  those  people 
who  wish  to  found  sects.  For  it  is  not  error,  but  sec 
tarian  error,  yes,  even  sectarian  truth,  that  makes  men 
unhappy,  or  would  do  so  if  truth  would  found  a  sect."  * 
Again  he  says,  that  in  his  theological  controversies  he  is 
"  much  less  concerned  about  theology  than  about  sound 

*  To  his  brother  Karl,  20th  April,  1774. 


LESSING.  335 

common-sense,  and  only  therefore  prefer  the  old  ortho 
dox  (at  bottom  tolerant)  theology  to  the  new  (at  bottom 
intolerant),  because  the  former  openly  conflicts  with 
sound  common-sense,  while  the  latter  would  fain  corrupt 
it.  I  reconcile  myself  with  my  open  enemies  in  order 
the  better  to  be  on  my  guard  against  my  secret  ones."  * 
At  another  time  he  tells  his  brother  that  he  has  a  wholly 
false  notion  of  his  (Lessing's)  relation  to  orthodoxy. 
"  Do  you  suppose  I  grudge  the  world  that  anybody 
should  seek  to  enlighten  it  1  — that  I  do  not  heartily 
wish  that  every  one  should  think  rationally  about  relig 
ion  ?  I  should  loathe  myself  if  even  in  my  scribblings 
I  had  any  other  end  than  to  help  forward  those  great 
views.  But  let  me  choose  my  own  way,  which  I  think 
best  for  this  purpose.  And  what  is  simpler  than  this 
way  1  I  would  not  have  the  impure  water,  which  has 
long  been  unfit  to  use,  preserved ;  but  I  would  not  have 
it  thrown  away  before  we  know  whence  to  get  purer. 
.  .  .  .  Orthodoxy,  thank  God,  we  were  pretty  well  done 
with  ;  a  partition-wall  had  been  built  between  it  and  Phi 
losophy,  behind  which  each  could  go  her  own  way  with 
out  troubling  the  other.  But  what  are  they  doing  now  1 
They  are  tearing  down  this  wall,  and,  under  the  pretext 
of  making  us  rational  Christians,  are  making  us  very 

irrational  philosophers We  are  agreed  that  our 

old  religious  system  is  false  ;  but  I  cannot  say  with  you 
that  it  is  a  patchwork  of  bunglers  and  half-philosophers. 
I  know  nothing  in  the  world  in  which  human  acuteness 
has  been  more  displayed  or  exercised  than'  in  that."f 
Lessing  was  always  for  freedom,  never  for  looseness,  of 
thought,  still  less  for  laxity  of  principle.  But  it  must 
be  a  real  freedom,  and  not  that  vain  struggle  to  become 
a  majority,  which,  if  it  succeed,  escapes  from  heresy 

*  To  the  same,  20th  March,  1777. 
t  To  the  same,  2d  February,  1774. 


336  LESSING. 

only  to  make  heretics  of  the  other  side.  Abire  ad  plures 
would  with  him  have  meant,  not  bodily  but  spiritual 
death.      He  did  not  love  the  fanaticism  of  innovation  a 
whit  better  than  that  of  conservatism.     To  his  sane  un 
derstanding,  both  were  equally  hateful,  as  different  masks 
Iof  the  same  selfish  bully.     Coleridge  said  that  toleration 
was  impossible  till  indifference  made  it  worthless.     Les- 
feing  did  not  wish  for  toleration,  because  that   implies 
authority,  nor  could  his  earnest  temper  have  conceived 
of  indifference.     But  he  thought  it  as  absurd  to  regu 
late   opinion   as  the  color  of  the   hair.      Here,  too,  he 
would    have    agreed   with  Seldcn,   that   "  it    is   a    vain 
thing  to  talk  of  an  heretic,  for  a  man  for  his  heart  can 
not  think  any  otherwise  than  he   does    think."     Herr 
Stahr's  chapters  on  this  point,  bating  a  little  exaltation 
of  tone,  are  very  satisfactory ;  though,  in  his  desire  to 
make  a  leader  of  Lessing,  he  almost  represents  him  as 
being  what  he  shunned,  —  the  founder  of  a  sect.     The 
fact  is,  that  Lessing  only  formulated  in  his  own  way  a 
general  movement  of  thought,  and  what  mainly  interests 
us  is  that  in  him  we  see  a  layman,  alike  indifferent  to 
clerisy  and  heresy,  giving  energetic  and  pointed  utter 
ance  to  those  opinions  of  his  class  which  the  clergy  are 
content  to  ignore  so  long  as  they  remain  esoteric.     At 
present  the  world  has  advanced  to  where  Lessing  stood, 
while  the  Church  has  done  its  best  to  stand  stock-still ; 
and  it  would  be  a  curious  were  it  not  a  melancholy  spec 
tacle,  to  see  the  indifference  with  which  the  laity  look  on 
while  theologians  thrash  their  wheatless  straw,  utterly 
unconscious  that  there  is  no  longer  any  common  term 
possible  that  could  bring  their  creeds  again  to  any  point 
of  bearing  on  the  practical  life  of  men.     Fielding  never 
made  a  profounder  stroke  of  satire  than  in  Squire  West 
ern's  indignant  "  Art  not  in  the  pulpit  now  !     When  art 
got  up  there,  I  never  mind  what  dost  say." 


LESSING.  337 

As  an  author,  Lessing  began  his  career  at  a  period 
when  we  cannot  say  that  German  literature  was  at  its 
lowest  ebb,  only  because  there  had  not  yet  been  any 
flood-tide.  That  may  be  said  to  have  begun  with  him. 
When  we  say  German  literature,  we  mean  so  much  of  it 
as  has  any  interest  outside  of  Germany.  That  part  of 
the  literary  histories  which  treats  of  the  dead  waste  and 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  reads  like  a  collection 
of  obituaries,  and  were  better  reduced  to  the  conciseness 
of  epitaph,  though  the  authors  of  them  seem  to  find  a 
melancholy  pleasure,  much  like  that  of  undertakers,  in  the 
task  by  which  they  live.  Gottsched  reigned  supreme  on 
the  legitimate  throne  of  dulness.  In  Switzerland,  Bod- 
mer  essayed  a  more  republican  form  of  the  same  author 
ity.  At  that  time  a  traveller  reports  eight  hundred 
authors  in  Zurich  alone !  Young  aspirant  for  lettered 
fame,  in  imagination  clear  away  the  lichens  from  their 
forgotten  headstones,  and  read  humbly  the  "  As  I  am, 
so  thou  must  be,"  on  all !  Everybody  remembers  how 
Goethe,  in  the  seventh  book  of  his  autobiography,  tells 
the  story  of  his  visit  to  Gottsched.  He  enters  by  mis 
take  an  inner  room  at  the  moment  when  a  frightened 
servant  brings  the  discrowned  potentate  a  periwig  large 
enough  to  reach  to  the  elbows.  That  awful  emblem  of 
pretentious  sham  seems  to  be  the  best  type  of  the  liter 
ature  then  predominant.  We  always  fancy  it  set  upon 
a  pole,  like  Gessler's  hat,  with  nothing  in  it  that  was  not 
wooden,  for  all  men  to  bow  down  before.  The  periwig- 
style  had  its  natural  place  in  the  age  of  Louis  XIV., 
and  there  were  certainly  brains  under  it.  But  it  had 
run  out  in  France,  as  the  tie-wig  style  of  Pope  had  in 
England.  In  Germany  it  was  the  mere  imitation  of  an 
imitation.  Will  it  be  believed  that  Gottsched  recom 
mends  his  Art  of  Poetry  to  beginners,  in  preference  to 
Breitinger's,  because  it  "  will  enable  them  to  produce  every 
15  v 


338  LESSING. 

species  of  poem  in  a  correct  style,  while  out  of  that  no  one 
can  learn  to  make  an  ode  or  a  cantata  "  1     "  Whoever," 
he  says,  "buys  Breitinger's  book  in  order  to  learn  hoiv  to 
make  poems,  will  too  late  regret  his  money."*     Gott- 
sched,  perhaps,  did  some  service  even  by  his  advocacy 
of  French  models,  by  calling  attention  to  the  fact  that 
there  was  such  a  thing  as  style,  and  that  it  was  of  some 
consequence.     But  not  one  of  the  authors  of  that  time 
can  be  said  to  survive,  nor  to  be  known  even  by  name  ex 
cept  to  Germans,  unless  it  be  Klopstock,  Herder,  Wieland, 
and  Gellert.    And  the  latter's  immortality,  such  as  it  is, 
reminds  us  somewhat  of  that  Lady  Gosling's,  whose  obit 
uary  stated  that  she  was  "mentioned  by  Mrs.  Barbaiild 
in  her  Life  of  Richardson  '  under  the  name  of  Miss  M., 
afterwards  Lady  G.' "    Klopstock  himself  is  rather  re 
membered  for  what  he  was  than  what  he  is,  —  an  im 
mortality  of  unreadableness  ;  and  we  much  doubt  if 
many  Germans  put  the  "  Oberon  "  in  their  trunks  when 
they  start    on  a  journey.      Herder   alone   survives,   if 
not  as  a  contributor  to  literature,  strictly  so  called,  yet 
as  a  thinker  and  as  part  of   the   intellectual  impulse 
of  the  day.     But  at  the  time,  though  there  were  two 
parties,  yet  within  the  lines  of  each  there  was  a  loyal 
reciprocity  of   what  is  called  on  such  occasions  appre 
ciation.     Wig   ducked   to  wig,  each   blockhead    had  a 
brother,  and   there  was  a  universal   apotheosis   of  the 
mediocrity  of  our  set.     If  the  greatest  happiness  of  the 
greatest  number  be  the  true  theory,  this  was  all  that 
could  be  desired.     Even  Lessing  at  one  time  looked  up 
to  Hagedorn  as  the  German  Horace.     If  Hagedorn  were 
pleased,  what  mattered  it  to  Horace  1     Worse  almost 
than  this  was  the  universal  pedantry.     The  solemn  bray 
of  one  pedagogue  was  taken  up  and  prolonged  in  a  thou 
sand  echoes.     There  was  not  only  no  originality,  but  no 
*  Gervinus,  IV.  62. 


LESSING.  339 

desire  for  it,  — -  perhaps  even  a  dread  of  it,  as  something 
that  would  break  the  entente  cordiale  of  placid  mutual 
assurance.  No  great  writer  had  given  that  tone  of  good- 
breeding  to  the  language  which  would  gain  it  entrance 
to  the  society  of  European  literature.  No  man  of  genius 
had  made  it  a  necessity  of  polite  culture.  It  was  still 
as  rudely  provincial  as  the  Scotch  of  Allan  Eamsay. 
Frederick  the  Great  was  to  be  forgiven  if,  with  his  prac 
tical  turn,  he  gave  himself  wholly  to  French,  which  had 
replaced  Latin  as  a  cosmopolitan  tongue.  It  had  light 
ness,  ease,  fluency,  elegance,  —  in  short,  all  the  good 
qualities  that  German  lacked.  The  study  of  French 
models  was  perhaps  the  best  thing  for  German  literature 
before  it  got  out  of  long-clothes.  It  was  bad  only  when 
it  became  a  tradition  and  a  tyranny.  Lessing  did  more 
than  any  other  man  to  overthrow  this  foreign  usurpa 
tion  when  it  had  done  its  work. 

The  same  battle  had  to  be  fought  on  English  soil  also, 
and  indeed  is  hardly  over  yet.  For  the  renewed  out 
break  of  the  old  quarrel  between  Classical  and  Romantic 
grew  out  of  nothing  more  than  an  attempt  of  the  mod 
ern  spirit  to  free  itself  from  laws  of  taste  laid  down 
by  the  Grand  Siecle.  But  we  must  not  forget  the 
debt  which  all  modern  prose  literature  owes  to  France. 
It  is  true  that  Machiavelli  was  the  first  to  write 
with  classic  pith  and  point  in  a  living*  language  ;  but 
he  is,  for  all  that,  properly  an  ancient.  Montaigne 
is  really  the  first  modern  writer,  —  the  first  who  as 
similated  his  Greek  and  Latin,  and  showed  that  an 
author  might  be  original  and  charming,  even  classical, 
if  he  did  not  try  too  hard.  He  is  also  the  first  modern 
critic,  and  his  judgments  of  the  writers  of  antiquity  are 
those  of  an  equal.  He  made  the  ancients  his  servants, 
to  help  him  think  in  Gascon  French ;  and,  in  spite  of 
his  endless  quotations,  began  the  crusade  against  ped- 


340  LESSING. 

antry.  It  was  not,  however,  till  a  century  later,  that  the 
reform  became  complete  in  France,  and  then  crossed  the 
Channel.  Milton  is  still  a  pedant  in  his  prose,  and  not 
seldom  even  in  his  great  poem.  Dryden  was  the  first 
Englishman  who  wrote  perfectly  easy  prose,  and  he  owed 
his  style  and  turn  of  thought  to  his  French  reading. 
His  learning  sits  easily  on  him,  and  has  a  modern  cut. 
So  far,  the  French  influence  was  one  of  unmixed  good, 
for  it  rescued  us  from  pedantry.  It  must  have  done 
something  for  Germany  in  the  same  direction.  For  its 
effect  on  poetry  we  cannot  say  as  much ;  and  its  tradi 
tions  had  themselves  become  pedantry  in  another  shape 
when  Lessing  made  an  end  of  it.  He  himself  certainly 
learned  to  write  prose  of  Diderot ;  and  whatever  Herr 
Stahr  may  think  of  it,  his  share  in  the  "  Letters  on  Ger 
man  Literature  "  got  its  chief  inspiration  from  France. 

It  is  in  the  Dramaturgic  that  Lessing  first  properly 
enters  as  an  influence  into  European  literature.  He  may 
be  said  to  have  begun  the  revolt  from  pseudo-classicism 
in  poetry,  and  to  have  been  thus  unconsciously  the 
founder  of  romanticism.  Wieland's  translation  of  Shake 
speare  had,  it  is  true,  appeared  in  1762  ;  but  Lessing 
was  the  first  critic  whose  profound  knowledge  of  the 
Greek  drama  and  apprehension  of  its  principles  gave 
weight  to  his  judgment,  who  recognized  in  what  the  true 
greatness  of  the  poet  consisted,  and  found  him  to  be 
really  nearer  the  Greeks  than  any  other  modern.  This 
was  because  Lessing  looked  always  more  to  the  life  than 
the  form,  —  because  he  knew  the  classics,  and  did  not 
merely  cant  about  ,them.  But  if  the  authority  of  Les 
sing,  by  making  people  feel  easy  in  their  admiration  for 
Shakespeare,  perhaps  increased  the  influence  of  his 
works,  and  if  his  discussions  of  Aristotle  have  given  a 
new  starting-point  to  modern  criticism,  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  the  immediate  effect  on  literature  of  his  own 


LESSING.  341 

critical  essays  was  so  great  as  Herr  Stahr  supposes. 
Surely  "  Gotz  "  and  "  The  Robbers  "  are  nothing  like 
what  he  would  have  called  Shakespearian,  and  the  whole 
Sturm  und  Drang  tendency  would  have  roused  in  him  j 
nothing  but  antipathy.  Fixed  principles  in  criticism 
are  useful  in  helping  us  to  form  a  j  udgment  of  works  al 
ready  produced,  but  it  is  questionable  whether  they  are 
not  rather  a  hindrance  than  a  help  to  living  production. 
Ben  Jonson  was  a  fine  critic,  intimate  with  the  classics 
as  few  men  have  either  the  leisure  or  the  strength  of 
mind  to  be  in  this  age  of  many  books,  and  built  regular 
plays  long  before  they  were  heard  of  in  France.  But  he 
continually  trips  and  falls  flat  over  his  metewand  of 
classical  propriety,  his  personages  are  abstractions,  and 
fortunately  neither  his  precepts  nor  his  practice  influ 
enced  any  one  of  his  greater  coevals.*  In  breadth  of  un- 
\  derstanding,  and  the  gravity  of  purpose  that  comes  of 
/  it,  he  was  far  above  Fletcher  or  Webster,  but  how  far 
below  either  in  the  subtler,  the  incalculable,  qualities  of 
a  dramatic  poet !  Yet  Ben,  with  his  principles  off,  could 
soar  and  sing  with  the  best  of  them ;  and  there  are 
strains  in  his  lyrics  which  Herrick,  the  most  Catullian 
of  poets  since  Catullus,  could  imitate,  but  never  match. 
A  constant  reference  to  the  statutes  which  taste  has 
codified  would  only  bewilder  the  creative  instinct.  Crit 
icism  can  at  best  teach  writers  without  genius  what  is  to 
be  avoided  or  imitated.  It  cannot  communicate  life ; 

*  It  should  be  considered,  by  those  sagacious  persons  who  think 
that  the  most  marvellous  intellect  of  which  we  have  any  record  could 
not  master  so  much  Latin  and  Greek  as  would  serve  a  sophomore,  that 
Shakespeare  must  through  conversation  have  possessed  himself  of 
whatever  principles  of  art  Ben  Jonson  and  the  other  university  men 
had  been  able  to  deduce  from  their  study  of  the  classics.  That  they 
should  not  have  discussed  these  matters  over  their  sack  at  the  Mer 
maid  is  incredible;  that  Shakespeare,  who  left  not  a  drop  in  any 
orange  he  squeezed,  could  not  also  have  got  all  the  juice  out  of  this 
one,  is  even  more  so. 


342  LESSING. 

and  its  effect,  when  reduced  to  rules,  has  commonly  been 
to  produce  that  correctness  which  is  so  praiseworthy  and 
so  intolerable.  It  cannot  give  taste,  it  can  only  demon 
strate  who  has  had  it.  Lessing's  essays  in  this  kind 
were  of  service  to  German  literature  by  their  manliness 
of  style,  whose  example  was  worth  a  hundred  treatises, 
and  by  the  stimulus  there  is  in  all  original  thinking. 
Could  he  have  written  such  a  poem  as  he  was  capable  of 
conceiving,  his  influence  would  have  been  far  greater. 
It  is  the  living  soul,  and  not  the  metaphysical  abstrac 
tion  of  it,  that  is  genetic  in  literature.  If  to  do  wrere 
as  easy  as  to  know  what  were  good  to  be  done  !  It  was 
out  of  his  own  failures  to  reach  the  ideal  he  saw  so 
clearly,  that  Lessing  drew  the  wisdom  which  made  him 
so  admirable  a  critic.  Even  here,  too,  genius  can  profit 
by  no  experience  but  its  own. 

For,  in  spite  of  Herr  Stahr's  protest,  we  must  ac 
knowledge  the  truth  of  Lessing's  own  characteristic  con 
fession,  that  he  was  no  poet.  A  man  of  genius  he 
unquestionably  was,  if  genius  may  be  claimed  no  less  for 
force  than  fineness  of  mind,  —  for  the  intensity  of  con 
viction  that  inspires  the  understanding  as  much  as  for 
that  apprehension  of  beauty  which  gives  energy  of  will 
to  imagination,  —  but  a  poetic  genius  he  was  not.  His 
mind  kindled  by  friction  in  the  process  of  thinking,  not 
in  the  flash  of  conception,  and  its  delight  is  in  demon 
stration,  not  in  bodying  forth.  His  prose  can  leap  and 
run,  his  verse  is  always  thinking  of  its  feet.  Yet  in  his 
"  Minna  "  and  his  "  Emilia  "  *  he  shows  one  faculty  of 

*  In  "  Minna"  and  "  Emilia "  Lessing  followed  the  lead  of  Diderot. 
In  the  Preface  to  the  second  edition  of  Diderot's  Theatre,  he  says:  "  I 
am  very  conscious  that  my  taste,  without  Diderot's  example  and 
teaching,  would  have  taken  quite  another  direction.  Perhaps  one 
more  my  own,  yet  hardly  one  with  which  my  understanding  would  in 
the  long  run  have  been  so  well  content."  Diderot's  choice  of  prose 
was  dictated  and  justified  by  the  accentual  poverty  of  his  mother- 


LESSING.  \343    } 

the  dramatist,  that  of  construction,  in  a  higher  degree 
than  any  other  German.*  Here  his  critical  deductions 
served  him  to  some  purpose.  The  action  moves  rapidly, 
there  is  no  speechifying,  and  the  parts  are  coherent. 
Both  plays  act  better  than  anything  of  Goethe  or  Schil 
ler.  But  it  is  the  story  that  interests  us,  and  not  the 
characters.  These  are  not,  it  is  true,  the  incorporation 
of  certain  ideas,  or,  still  worse,  of  certain  dogmas,  but 
they  certainly  seem  something  like  machines  by  which 
the  motive  of  the  play  is  carried  on  ;  and  there  is  noth-  "  v 
ing  of  that  interplay  of  plot  and  character  which  makes 
Shakespeare  more  real  in  the  closet  than  other  drama 
tists  with  all  the  helps  of  the  theatre.  It  is  a  striking 
illustration  at  once  of  the  futility  of  mere  critical  insight 
and  of  Lessing' s  want  of  imagination,  that  in  the  Emilia 
he  should  have  thought  a  Roman  motive  consistent  with 
modern  habits  of  thought,  and  that  in  Nathan  he  should 
have  been  guilty  of  anachronisms  which  violate  not  only 
the  accidental  truth  of  fact,  but  the  essential  truth  of 

tongue.  Lessing  certainly  revised  his  judgment  on  this  point  (for  it 
•was  not  equally  applicable  to  German),  and  wrote  his  maturer  "Na 
than  "  in  what  he  took  for  blank  verse.  There  was  much  kindred  be 
tween  the  minds  of  the  two  men.  Diderot  always  seems  to  us  a  kind 
of  deboshed  Lessing.  Lessing  was  also  indebted  to  Burke,  Hume,  the 
two  Wartons,  and  Kurd,  among  other  English  writers.  Not  that  he 
borrowed  anything  of  them  but  the  quickening  of  his  own  thought.  It 
should  be  remembered  that  Rousseau  was  seventeen,  Diderot  and 
Sterne  sixteen,  and  Winckelmanu  twelve  years  older  than  Lessing. 
Wieland  was  four  years  younger. 

*  Goethe's  appreciation  of  Lessing  grew  with  his  years.  He  writes 
to  Lavater,  18th  March,  1781:  "  Lessing' s  death  has  greatly  depressed 
me.  I  had  much  pleasure  in  him  and  much  hope  of  him."  This  is  a 
little  patronizing  in  tone.  But  in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  talking  with 
Eckermann,  he  naturally  antedates  his  admiration,  as  reminiscence  is 
wont  to  do:  "  You  can  conceive  what  an  effect  this  piece  (Minna)  had 
upon  us  young  people.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  shining  meteor.  It  made  us 
aware  that  something  higher  existed  than  anything  whereof  that  feeble 
literary  epoch  had  a  notion.  The  first  two  acts  are  truly  a  masterpiece 
of  exposition,  from  which  one  learned  much  and  can  always  learn." 


344  LESSING. 

character.    f  Even  if  we  allowed  him  imagination,  it  must 
be  only  on  the  lower  plane  of  prose;  for  of  verse  as  any 
thing  more  than  so  many  metrical  feet  he  had  not  the 
faintest  notion.     Of  that  exquisite  sympathy  with  the 
movement  of  the  mind,  with  every  swifter  or  slower 
pulse  of  passion,  which  proves  it  another  species  from 
prose,   the  very  d<ppodiTT)  KOI  \vpa  of  speech,   and  not 
merely  a  higher  one,  he  wanted  the  fineness  of  sense  to 
conceive.     If  we  compare  the  prose  of  Dante  or  Milton, 
though  both  were  eloquent,  with  their  verse,  we  see  at 
once  which  was  the  most  congenial  to  them.     Lessing 
has  passages  of  freer  and  more   harmonious  utterance 
in  some  of  his  most  careless  prose  essays,  than  can  be 
found  in  his  Nathan  from  the  first  line  to  the  last.     In 
the  numeris  lege  solutis  he  is  often  snatched  beyond  him 
self,  and  becomes  truly  dithyrambic  ;  in  his  pentameters 
the  march  of  the  thought  is  comparatively  hampered 
and  irresolute.     His  best  things  are  not  poetically  deli 
cate,  but  have  the  tougher  fibre  of  proverbs.     Is  it  not 
enough,  then,  to  be  a  great  prose-writer  ?     They  are  as 
rare  as  great  poets,  and  if  Lessing  have  the  gift  to  stir 
and  to  dilate  that  something  deeper  than  the  mind  which 
genius  only  can  reach,  what  matter  if  it  be  not  done  to 
music  1     Of  his  minor  poems  we  need  say  little.     Verse 
was  always  more  or  less  mechanical  with  him,  and  his 
epigrams  are  almost  all  stiff,  as  if  they  were  bad  trans 
lations  from  the  Latin.     Many  of  them  are  shockingly 
coarse,  and  in  liveliness  are  on  a  level  with  those  of  our 
Elizabethan  period.     Herr  Stahr,  of  course,  cannot  bear 
to  give  them  up,  even  though  Gervinus  be  willing.     The 
prettiest  of  his  shorter  poems  (Die  Namen)  has  been  ap 
propriated  by  Coleridge,  who  has  given  it  a  grace  which 
it  wants  in  the  original.     His  Nathan,  by  a  poor  trans 
lation  of  which  he  is  chiefly  known  to  English  readers, 
is  an  Essay  on  Toleration  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue.    As 


LESSING.  345 

a  play,  it  has  not  the  interest  of  Minna  or  Emilia,  though 
the  Germans,  who  have  a  praiseworthy  national  stoicism 
where  one  of  their  great  writers  is  concerned,  find  in 
seeing  it  represented  a  grave  satisfaction,  like  that  of 
subscribing  to  a  monument.  There  is  a  sober  lustre  of 
reflection  in  it  that  makes  it  very  good  reading ;  but  it 
wants  the  molten  interfusion  of  thought  and  phrase 
which  only  imagination  can  achieve. 

As  Lessing's  mind  was  continually  advancing,  —  always 
open  to  new  impressions,  and  capable,  as  very  few  are, 
of  apprehending  the  many-sidedness  of  truth,  —  as  he 
had  the  rare  quality  of  being  honest  with  himself,  — • 
his  works  seem  fragmentary,  and  give  at  first  an  im 
pression  of  incompleteness.  But  one  learns  at  length 
to  recognize  and  value  this  very  incompleteness  as  char 
acteristic  of  the  man  who  was  growing  lifelong,  and  to 
whom  the  selfish  thought  that  any  share  of  truth  could 
be  exclusively  his  was  an  impossibility.  At  the  end  of 
the  ninety-fifth  number  of  the  Dramaturgic  he  says  :  "  I 
remind  my  readers  here,  that  these  pages  are  by  no 
means  intended  to  contain  a  dramatic  system.  I  am 
accordingly  not  bound  to  solve  all  the  difficulties  which 
I  raise.  I  am  quite  willing  that  my  thoughts  should 
seem  to  want  connection,  —  nay,  even  to  contradict  each 
other,  —  if  only  there  are  thoughts  in  which  they  [my 
readers]  find  material  for  thinking  themselves.  I  wish 
to  do  nothing  more  than  scatter  the  fermenta  cognitionis" 
That  is  Lessing's  great  praise,  and  gives  its  chief  value 
to  his  works,  —  a  value,  indeed,  imperishable,  and  of 
the  noblest  kind.  No  writer  can  leave  a  more  precious 
legacy  to  posterity  than  this;  and  beside  this  shining 
merit,  all  mere  literary  splendors  look  pale  and  cold. 
There  is  that  life  in  Lessing's  thought  which  engenders 
life,  and  not  only  thinks  for  us,  but  makes  us  think. 
Not  sceptical,  but  forever  testing  and  inquiring,  it  is 
15* 


346  LESSING. 

out  of  the  cloud  of  his  own  doubt  that  the  flash  comes 
at  last  with  sudden  and  vivid  illumination.  Flashes 
they  indeed  are,  his  finest  intuitions,  and  of  very  differ 
ent  quality  from  the  equable  north-light  of  the  artist.  He 
felt  it,  and  said  it  of  himself,  "  Ever  so  many  flashes  of 
lightning  do  not  make  daylight."  We  speak  now  of 
those  more  rememberable  passages  where  his  highest 
individuality  reveals  itself  in  what  may  truly  be  called 
a  passion  of  thought.  In  the  "  Laocoon  "  there  is  day 
light  of  the  serenest  temper,  and  never  was  there  a  bet 
ter  example  of  the  discourse .  of  reason,  though  even 
that  is  also  a  fragment. 

But  it  is  as  a  nobly  original  man,  even  more  than  as 
an  original  thinker,  that  Lessing  is  precious  to  us,  and 
that  he  is  so  considerable  in  German  literature.  In  a 
higher  sense,  but  in  the  same  kind,  he  is  to  Germans 
what  Dr.  Johnson  is  to  us,  —  admirable  for  what  he  was. 
Like  Johnson's,  too,  but  still  from  a  loftier  plane,  a  great 
deal  of  his  thought  has  a  direct  bearing  on  the  immedi 
ate  life  and  interests  of  men.  His  genius  was  not  a  St. 
Elmo's  fire,  as  it  so  often  is  with  mere  poets,  —  as  it 
was  in  Shelley,  for  example,  playing  in  ineffectual  flame 
about  the  points  of  his  thought,  —  but  was  interfused 
with  his  whole  nature  and  made  a  part  of  his  very  be 
ing.  To  the  Germans,  with  their  weak  nerve  of  senti- 
mentalism,  his  brave  common-sense  is  a  far  wholesomer 
tonic  than  the  cynicism  of  Heine,  which  is,  after  all, 
only  sentimentalism  soured.  His  jealousy  for  maintain 
ing  the  just  boundaries  whether  of  art  or  speculation 
may  warn  them  to  check  with  timely  dikes  the  tendency 
of  their  thought  to  diffuse  inundation.  Their  fondness 
in  aesthetic  discussion  for  a  nomenclature  subtile  enough 
to  split  a  hair  at  which  even  a  Thomist  would  have  de 
spaired,  is  rebuked  by  the  clear  simplicity  of  his  style.* 

*  Nothing  can  be  droller  than  the  occasional  translation  by  Vischer 
of  a  sentence  of  Lessing  into  his  own  jargon. 


LESSING.  347 

But  he  is  no  exclusive  property  of  Germany.  As  a  com 
plete  man,  constant,  generous,  full  of  honest  courage, 
as  a  hardy  follower  of  Thought  wherever  she  might  lead 
him,  above  all,  as  a  confessor  of  that  Truth  which  is 
forever  revealing  itself  to  the  seeker,  and  is  the  more 
loved  because  never  wholly  revealable,  he  is  an  ennobling 
possession  of  mankind.  Let  his  own  striking  words 
characterize  him  :  — 

"  Not  the  truth  of  which  any  one  is,  or  supposes  him 
self  to  be,  possessed,  but  the  upright  endeavor  he  has 
made  to  arrive  at  truth,  makes  the  worth  of  the  man. 
For  not  by  the  possession,  but  by  the  investigation,  of 
truth  are  his  powers  expanded,  wherein  alone  his  ever 
growing  perfection  consists.  Possession  makes  us  easy, 
indolent,  proud. 

"  If  God  held  all  truth  shut  in  his  right  hand,  and  in 
his  left  nothing  but  the  ever-restless  instinct  for  truth, 
though  with  the  condition  of  for  ever  and  ever  erring, 
and  should  say  to  me,  Choose  !  I  should  bow  humbly  to 
his  left  hand,  and  say,  Father,  give  !  pure  truth  is  for; 
Thee  alone  !  " 

It  is  not  without  reason  that  fame  is  awarded  only 
after  death.  The  dust-cloud  of  notoriety  which  follows 
and  envelopes  the  men  who  drive  with  the  wind  bewil 
ders  contemporary  judgment.  Lessing,  while  he  lived, 
had  little  reward  for  his  labor  but  the  satisfaction  in 
herent  in  all  work  faithfully  done  ;  the  highest,  no  doubt, 
of  which  human  nature  is  capable,  and  yet  perhaps  not 
so  sweet  as  that  sympathy  of  which  the  world's  praise  is 
but  an  index.  But  if  to  perpetuate  herself  beyond  the 
grave  in  healthy  and  ejjn^bling: influences  be  the  noblest 
aspiration  of  the  mind,  and  its  fruition  the  only  reward 
she  would  have  deemed  worthy  of  herself,  then  is  Lessing 
to  be  counted  thrice  fortunate.  Every  year  since  he 
was  laid  prematurely  in  the  earth  has  seen  his  power 


348  LESSING. 

for  good  increase,  and  made  him  more  precious  to  the 
hearts  and  intellects  of  men.  "  Lessing,"  said  Goethe, 
"  would  have  declined  the  lofty  title  of  a  Genius ;  but 
his  enduring  influence  testifies  against  himself.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  have  in  literature  other  and  indeed  im 
portant  names  of  men  who,  while  they  lived,  were  es 
teemed  great  geniuses,  but  whose  influence  ended  with 
their  lives,  and  who,  accordingly,  were  less  than  they  and 
others  thought.  For,  as  I  have  said,  there  is  no  genius 
without  a  productive  power  that  continues  forever  opera 
tive."  * 

*  Eckermann,  Gesprache  mit  Goethe,  III.  229. 


EOUSSEAU  AND  THE  SENTIMENTALISTS.* 


"  WE  have  had  the  great  professor  and  founder  of  the 
philosophy  of  Vanity  in  England.  As  I  had  good  op 
portunities  of  knowing  his  proceedings  almost  from  day 
to  day,  he  left  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that  he  entertained 
no  principle  either  to  influence  his  heart  or  to  guide  his 
understanding  but  vanity ;  with  this  vice  he  was  pos 
sessed  to  a  degree  little  short  of  madness.  Benevolence 
to  the  whole  species,  and  want  of  feeling  for  every  indi 
vidual  with  whom  the  professors  come  in  contact,  form 
the  character  of  the  new  philosophy.  Setting  up  for  an 
unsocial  independence,  this  their  hero  of  vanity  refuses 
the  just  price  of  common  labor,  as  well  as  the  tribute 
which  opulence  owes  to  genius,  and  which,  when  paid, 
honors  the  giver  and  the  receiver,  and  then  pleads  his 
beggary  as  an  excuse  for  his  crimes.  He  melts  with 
tenderness  for  those  only  who  touch  him  by  the  remotest 
relation,  and  then,  without  one  natural  pang,  casts  away, 
as  a  sort  of  offal  and  excrement,  the  spawn  of  his  dis 
gustful  amours,  and  sends  his  children  to  the  hospital  of 
foundlings.  The  bear  loves,  licks,  and  forms  her  young ; 
but  bears  are  not  philosophers." 

This  was  Burke's  opinion  of  the  only  contemporary 

*  Histoire  des  Idees  Morales  et  Polltiques  en  France  au  XVIlImf- 
Siecle.  Par  M.  JULES  BARNI,  Professeur  a  1'Acaddmie  de  Geneve. 
Tome  II.  Paris.  1867. 


350         ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

who  can  be  said  to  rival  him  in  fervid  and  sustained  elo 
quence,  to  surpass  him  in  grace  and  persuasiveness  of 
style.  Perhaps  we  should  have  been  more  thankful  to 
him  if  he  had  left  us  instead  a  record  of  those  "  proceed 
ings  almost  from  day  to  day  "  which  he  had  such  "  good 
opportunities  of  knowing,"  but  it  probably  never  entered 
his  head  that  posterity  might  care  as  much  about  the 
doings  of  the  citizen  of  Geneva  as  about  the  sayings  of 
even  a  British  Right  Honorable.  Vanity  eludes  recogni 
tion  by  its  victims  in  more  shapes,  and  more  pleasing, 
than  any  other  passion,  and  perhaps  had  Mr.  Burke  been 
able  imaginatively  to  translate  Swiss  Jean  Jacques  into 
Irish  Edmund,  he  would  have  found  no  juster  equivalent 
for  the  obnoxious  trisyllable  than  "  righteous  self-esteem." 
For  Burke  was  himself  also,  in  the  subtler  sense  of  the 
word,  a  sentimentalist,  that  is,  a  man  who  took  what 
would  now  Be  called  an  aesthetic  view  of  morals  and  poli 
tics.  No  man  who  ever  wrote  English,  except  perhaps 
Mr.  Ruskin,  more  habitually  mistook  his  own  personal 
likes  and  dislikes,  tastes  and  distastes,  for  general  prin 
ciples,  and  this,  it  may  be  suspected,  is  the  secret  of  all 
merely  eloquent  writing.  He  hints  at  madness  as  an 
explanation  of  Rousseau,  and  it  is  curious  enough  that 
Mr.  Buckle  was  fain  to  explain  him  in  the  same  way.  It 
is  not,  we  confess,  a  solution  that  we  find  very  satisfac 
tory  in  this  latter  case.  Burke's  fury  against  the  French 
Revolution  was  nothing  more  than  was  natural  to  a  des 
perate  man  in  self-defence.  It  was  his  own  life,  or,  at 
least,  all  that  made  life  dear  to  him,  that  was  in  dan 
ger.  He  had  all  that  abstract  political  wisdom  which 
may  be  naturally  secreted  by  a  magnanimous  nature 
and  a  sensitive  temperament,  absolutely  none  of  that 
rough-and-tumble  kind  which  is  so  needful  for  the  con 
duct  of  affairs.  Fastidiousness  is  only  another  form  of 
egotism  ;  and  all  men  who  know  not  where  to  look  for 


ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         351 

truth  save  in  the  narrow  well  of  self  will  find  their  own 
image  at  the  bottom,  and  mistake  it  for  what  they  are 
seeking.  Burke's  hatred  of  Rousseau  was  genuine  and 
instinctive.  It  was  so  genuine  and  so  instinctive  as  no 
hatred  can  be  but  that  of  self,  of  our  own  weaknesses  as 
we  see  them  in  another  man.  But  there  was  also  some 
thing  deeper  in  it  than  this.  There  was  mixed  with  it 
the  natural  dread  in  the  political  diviner  of  the  political 
logician,  —  in  the  empirical,  of  the  theoretic  statesman. 
Burke,  confounding  the  idea  of  society  with  the  form  of 
it  then  existing,  would  have  preserved  that  as  the  only 
specific  against  anarchy.  Eousseau,  assuming  that  so 
ciety  as  it  then  existed  was  but  another  name  for  anar 
chy,  would  have  reconstituted  it  on  an  ideal  basis.  The 
one  has  left  behind  him  some  of  the  profoundest  aphor 
isms  of  political  wisdom  ;  the  other,  some  of  the  clearest 
principles  of  political  science.  The  one,  clinging  to  Di 
vine  right,  found  in  the  fact  that  things  were,  a  reason 
that  they  ought  to  be  ;  the  other,  aiming  to  solve  the 
problem  of  the  Divine  order,  would  deduce  from  that  ab 
straction  alone  the  claim  of  anything  to  be  at  all.  There 
seems  a  mere  oppugnancy  of  nature  between  the  two, 
and  yet  both  wereTTn  different  ways,  the  dupes  of  their 
own  imaginations. 

Now  let  us  hear  the  opinion  of  a  philosopher  who  was 
a  bear,  whether  bears  be  philosophers  or  not.  Boswell 
had  a  genuine  relish  for  what  was  superior  in  any  way, 
from  genius  to  claret,  and  of  course  he  did  not  let  Rous 
seau  escape  him.  "  One  evening  at  the  Mitre,  Johnson 
said  sarcastically  to  me,  '  It  seems,  sir,  you  have  kept 
very  good  company  abroad,  —  Rousseau  and  Wilkes  ! ' 
I  answered  with  a  smile,  '  My  dear  sir,  you  don't  call 
Rousseau  bad  company  ;  do  you  really  think  him  a  bad 
man  1 '  JOHNSON.  '  Sir,  if  you  are  talking  jestingly  of 
this,  I  don't  talk  with  you.  If  you  mean  to  be  serious, 


352         ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

I  think  him  one  of  the  worst  of  men,  a  rascal  who  ought  to 
be  hunted  out  of  society,  as  he  has  been.  Three  or  four 
nations  have  expelled  him,  and  it  is  a  shame  that  he  is 
protected  in  this  country.  Rousseau,  sir,  is  a  very  bad 
man.  I  would  sooner  sign  a  sentence  for  his  transpor 
tation,  than  that  of  any  felon  who  has  gone  from  the 
Old  Bailey  these  many  years.  Yes,  I  should  like  to  have 
him  work  in  the  plantations.'  "  We  were  the  plantations 
then,  and  Rousseau  was  destined  to  work  there  in  1m- 
other  and  much  more  wonderful  fashion  than  the  gruff 
old  Ursa  Major  imagined.  However,  there  is  always  a 
refreshing  heartiness  in  his  growl,  a  masculine  bass  with 
110  snarl  in  it.  The  Doctor's  logic  is  of  that  fine  old 
crusted  Port  sort,  the  native  manufacture  of  the  British 
conservative  mind.  Three  or  four  nations  have,  there 
fore  England  ought.  A  few  years  later,  had  the  Doctor 
been  living,  if  three  or  four  nations  had  treated  their 
kings  as  France  did  hers,  would  he  have  thought  the 
ergo  a  very  stringent  one  for  England  $ 

Mr.  Burke,  who  could  speak  with  studied  respect  of 
the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  of  his  vices  with  that  charity 
which  thinketh  no  evil  and  can  afford  to  think  no  evil 
of  so  important  a  living  member  of  the  British  "Constitu 
tion,  surely  could  have  had  no  unmixed  moral  repugnance 
for  Rousseau's  "disgustful  amours."  It  was  because 
they  were  his  that  they  were  so  loathsome.  Mr.  Burke 
was  a  snob,  though  an  inspired  one.  Dr.  Johnson,  the 
friend  of  that  wretchedest  of  lewd  fellows,  Richard  Sav 
age,  and  of  that  gay  man  about  town,  Topham  Beau- 
clerk,  —  himself  sprung  from  an  amour  that  would  have 
been  disgustful  had  it  not  been  royal,  —  must  also  have 
felt  something  more  in  respect  of  Rousseau  'than  the 
mere  repugnance  of  virtue  for  vice.  We  must  sometimes 
allow  to  personal  temperament  its  right  of  peremptory 
challenge.  Johnson  had  not  that  fine  sensitiveness  to 


ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

the  political  atmosphere  which  made  Burke  presagcful 
of  coming  tempest,  but  both  of  them  felt  that  there  was 
something  dangerous  in  this  man.  Their  dislike  has  in 
it  somewhat  of  the  energy  of  fear.  Neither  of  them  had 
the  same  feeling  toward  Voltaire,  the  man  of  supreme 
talent,  but  both  felt  that  what  Rousseau  was  possessed  by 
was  genius,  with  its  terrible  force  either  to  attract  or 

repel. 

"  By  the  pricking  of  my  thumbs, 
Something  wicked  this  way  comes." 

Burke  and  Johnson  were  both  of  them  sincere  men, 
both  of  them  men  of  Character  as  well  as  of^intellectual 
force ;  and  we  cite  their  opinions  of  Rousseau  with  the 
respect  which  is  due  to  an  honest  conviction  which  has 
apparent  grounds  for  its  adoption,  whether  we  agree  with 
it  or  no.  But  it  strikes  us  as  a  little  singular  that  one 
whose  life  was  so  full  of  moral  inconsistency,  whose  char 
acter  is  so  contemptible  in  many  ways,  in  some  wo 
might  almost  say  so  revolting,  should  yet  have  exercised 
so  deep  and  lasting  an  influence,  and  on  minds  so  various, 
should  still  be  an  object  of  minute  and  earnest  discus 
sion,  —  that  he  should  have  had  such  vigor  in  his  intel 
lectual  loins  as  to  have  been  the  father  of  Chateaubriand, 
Byron,  Lamartine,  George  Sand,  and  many  more  in  liter- 
ature,  in  politics  of  Jefferson  and  Thomas  Paine,  —  that 
the  spots  he  had  haunted  should  draw  pilgrims  so  unlike 
as  Gibbon  and  Napoleon,  nay,  should  draw  them  still, 
after  the  lapse  of  near  a  century.  Surely  there  must 
have  been  a  basis  of  sincerity  in  this  man  seldom 
matched,  if  it  can  prevail  against  so  many  reasons  for 
repugnance,  aversion,  and  even  disgust.  He  could  not 
have  been  the  mere  sentimentalist  and  rhetorician  for 
which  the  rough-and-ready  understanding  would  at  first 
glance  be  inclined  to  condemn  him.  In  a  certain  sense 
he  was  both  of  these,  but  he  was  something  more.  It 

w 


354         ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

will  bring  us  a  little  nearer  the  point  we  are  aiming  at  if 
we  quote  one  other  and  more  recent  English  opinion  of 
him. 

Mr.  Thomas  Moore,  returning  pleasantly  in  a  travel 
ling-carriage  from  a  trip  to  Italy,  in  which  he  had  never 
forgotten  the  poetical  shop  at  home,  but  had  carefully 
noted  down  all  the  pretty  images  that  occurred  to  him 
for  future  use,  —  Mr.  Thomas  Moore,  on  his  way  back 
from  a  visit  to  his  noble  friend  Byron,  at  Venice,  who 
had  there  been  leading  a  life  so  gross  as  to  be  talked 
about,  even  amid  the  crash  of  Napoleon's  fall,  and  who 
was  just  writing  "  Don  Juan  "  for  the  improvement  of 
the  world,  —  Mr.  Thomas  Moore,  fresh  from  the  read 
ing  of  Byron's  Memoirs,  which  were  so  scandalous  that, 
by  some  hocus-pocus,  three  thousand  guineas  afterward 
found  their  way  into  his  own  pocket  for  consenting  to 
suppress  them, — Mr.  Thomas  Moore,  the  ci-devant  friend 
of  the  Prince  Regent,  and  the  author  of  Little's  Poems, 
among  other  objects  of  pilgrimage  visits  Les  Charmettes, 
where  Rousseau  had  lived  with  Madame  de  Warens.  So 
good  an  opportunity  for  occasional  verses  was  not  to  be 
lost,  so  good  a  text  for  a  little  virtuous  moralizing  not 
to  be  thrown  away ;  and  accordingly  Mr.  Moore  pours 
out  several  pages  of  octosyllabic  disgust  at  the  sensual 
ity  of  the  dead  man  of  genius.  There  was  no  horror 
for  Byron.  Toward  him  all  was  suavity  and  decorous 
bienseance.  That  lively  sense  of  benefits  to  be  received 
'made  the  Irish  Anacreon  wink  with  both  his  little  eyes. 
In  the  judgment  of  a  liberal  like  Mr.  Moore,  were  not 
the  errors  of  a  lord  excusable  1  But  with  poor  Rousseau 
the  case  was  very  different.  The  son  of  a  watchmaker,  an 
outcast  from  boyhood  up,  always  on  the  perilous  edge  of 
poverty,  —  what  right  had  he  to  indulge  himself  in  any 
immoralities  ?  So  it  is  always  with  the  sentimentalists. 
It  is  never  the  thing  in  itself  that  is  bad  or  good,  but 


ROUSSEAU  AND  THE  SENTIMENTALISTS.         355 

the  thing  in  its  relation  to  some  conventional  and  mostly  1 
selfish  standard.  Moore  could  be  a  moralist,  in  this 
case,  without  any  trouble,  and  with  the  advantage  of 
winning  Lord  Lansdowne's  approval;  he  could  write 
some  graceful  verses  which  everybody  would  buy,  and 
for  the  rest  it  is  not  hard  to  be  a  stoic  in  eight-syllable 
measure  and  a  travelling-carriage.  The  next  dinner  at 
Bo  wood  will  taste  none  the  worse.  Accordingly  he 

speaks  of 

"  The  mire,  the  strife 
And  vanities  of  this  man's  life, 
Who  more  than  all  that  e'er  have  glowed 
With  fancy's  flame  (and  it  was  his 
In  fullest  warmth  and  radiance)  showed 
What  an  impostor  Genius  is ; 
How,  with  that  strong  mimetic  art 
Which  forms  its  life  and  soul,  it  takes 
All  shapes  of  thought,  all  hues  of  heart, 
Nor  feels  itself  one  throb  it  wakes ; 
How,  like  a  gem,  its  light  may  shine, 
O'er  the  dark  path  by  mortals  trod, 
Itself  as  mean  a  worm  the  while 
As  crawls  at  midnight  o'er  the  sod; 

How,  with  the  pencil  hardly  dry 

From  coloring  up  such  scenes  of  love 

And  beauty  as  make  young  hearts  sigh, 

And  dream  and  think  through  heaven  they  rove,"  &c.,  &c. 

Very  spirited,  is  it  not  1  One  has  only  to  overlook  a 
little  threadbareness  in  the  similes,  and  it  is  very  good 
oratorical  verse.  But  would  we  believe  in  it,  we  must 
never  read  Mr.  Moore's  own  journal,  and  find  out  how 
thin  a  piece  of  veneering  his  own  life  was,  —  how  he 
lived  in  sham  till  his  very  nature  had  become  subdued 
to  it,  till  he  could  persuade  himself  that  a  sham  could 
be  written  into  a  reality,  and  actually  made  experiment 
thereof  in  his  Diary. 

One  verse  in  this  diatribe  deserves  a  special  com 
ment,  — 

"  What  an  impostor  Genius  is! " 


356         ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS 

In  two  respects  there  is  nothing  to  be  objected  to  in  it. 
It  is  of  eight  syllables,  and  "  is  "  rhymes  unexception- 
ably  with  "his."  But  is  there  the  least  filament  of 
truth  in  it  1  We  venture  to  assert,  not  the  least.  It 
was  not  Rousseau's  genius  that  was  an  impostor.  It  was 
the  one  thing  in  him  that  was  always  true.  We  grant 
that,  in  allowing  that  a  man  has  genius.  (^  Talent  is  that 
which  is  in  a  man's  power ;  genius  is  that  in  whose 
power  a  man  isj  That  is  the  very  difference  between 
them.  We  might  turn  the  tables  on  Moore,  the  man  of 
talent,  and  say  truly  enough,  What  an  impostor  talent  is  ! 
Moore  talks  of  the  mimetic  power  with  a  total  misappre 
hension  of  what  it  really  is.  The  mimetic  power  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  affair.  Rousseau  had 
none  of  it ;  Shakespeare  had  it  in  excess  ;  but  what  dif 
ference  would  it  make  in  our  judgment  of  Hamlet  or 
Othello  if  a  manuscript  of  Shakespeare's  memoirs  should 
turn  up,  and  we  should  find  out  that  he  had  been  a  piti 
ful  fellow  1  None  in  the  world ;  for  he  is  not  a  professed 
moralist,  and  his  life  does  not  give  the  warrant  to  his 
words.  But  if  Demosthenes,  after  all  his  Philippics, 
throws  away  his  shield  and  runs,  we  feel  the  contempti- 
bleness  of  the  contradiction.  With  genius  itself  we 
never  find  any  fault.  It  would  be  an  over-nicety  that 
would  do  that.  We  do  not  get  invited  to  nectar  and 
ambrosia  so  often  that  we  think  of  grumbling  and  say 
ing  we  have  better  at  home.  No  ;  the  same  genius  that 
mastered  him  who  wrote  the  poem  masters  us  in  reading 
it,  and  we  care  for  nothing  outside  tho  poem  itself.  How 
the  author  lived,  what  he  wore,  how  he  looked,  —  all 
that  is  mere  gossip,  about  which  we  need  not  trouble 
ourselves.  Whatever  he  was  or  did,  somehow  or  other 
God  let  him  be  worthy  to  write  this,  and  that  is  enough 
for  us.  We  forgive  everything  to  the  genius  ;  we  are 
inexorable  to  the  man.  Shakespeare,  Goethe,  Burns,  — - 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         357 

what  have  their  biographies  to  do  with  us  1     Genius  is\  I 
not  a  question  of  character.     It  may  be  sordid,  like  the  \ 
lamp  of  Aladdin,  in  its  externals ;  what  care  we,  while 
the  touch  of  it  builds  palaces  for  us,  makes  us  rich  as  \ 
only  men  in  dream-land  are  rich,  and  lords  to  the  utmost  / 
bound  of  imagination  1      So,  when  people  talk  of  the 
ungrateful  way  in  which  the  world  treats  its  geniuses, 
they  speak  unwisely.     There  is  no  work  of  genius  which 
has  not  been  the  delight  of  mankind,  no  word  of  genius 
to  which  the  human  heart  and  soul  have  not,  sooner  or 
later,  responded.     But  the  man  whom  the  genius  takes 
possession  of  for  its  pen,  for  its  trowel,  for  its  pencil,  for 
its  chisel,  him  the  world  treats  according  to  his  deserts. 
Does  Burns  drink  1     It  sets  him  to  gauging  casks  of  gin. 
For,  remember,  it  is  not  to  the  practical  world  that  the 
genius  appeals  ;  it  is  the  practical  world  which  judges  of 
the  man's  fitness  for  its  uses,  and  has  a  right  so  to  judge. 
No  amount  of  patronage  could  have  made  distilled  liq-- 
uors  less  toothsome  to  Robbie  Burns,  as  no  amount  of 
them  could  make  a  Burns  of  the  Ettrick  Shepherd. 

There  is  an  old  story  in  the  Gesta  Romanorum  of  a 
priest  who  was  found  fault  with  by  one  of  his  parish' 
loners  because  his  life  was  in  painful  discordance  with 
his  teaching.  So  one  day  he  takes  his  critic  out  to  a 
stream,  and.  giving  him  to  drink  of  it,  asks  him  if  ho 
does  not  find  it  sweet  and  pure  water.  The  parishioner, 
having  answered  that  it  was,  is  taken  to  the  source,  and 
finds  that  what  had  so  refreshed  him  flowed  from  be 
tween  the  jaws  of  a  dead  dog.  "  Let  this  teach  thec," 
said  the  priest,  "  that  the  very  best  doctrine  may  tako 
its  rise  in  a  very  impure  and  disgustful  spring,  and  that 
excellent  morals  may  bo  taught  by  a  man  who  has  no 
morals  at  all."  It  is  easy  enough  to  see  the  fallacy  here. 
Had  the  man  known  beforehand  from  what  a  carrion 
fountain-head  the  stream  issued,  he  could  not  have 


358        ROUSSEAU  AND  THE  SENTIMENTALISTS. 

drunk  of  it  without  loathing.  Had  the  priest  merely 
bidden  him  to  look  at  the  stream  and  see  how  beautiful 
it  was,  instead  of  tasting  it,  it  would  have  been  quite 
another  matter.  And  this  is  precisely  the  difference  be 
tween  what  appeals  to  our  aesthetic  and  to  our  moral 
sense,  between  what  is  judged  of  by  the  taste  and  the 
conscience. 

It  is  when  the  sentimentalist  turns  preacher  of  morals 
that  we  investigate  his  character,  and  are  justified  in  so 
doing.  He  may  express  as  many  and  as  delicate  shades 
of  feeling  as  he  likes, — for  this  the  sensibility  of  his 
organization  perfectly  fits  him,  no  other  person  could  do 
it  so  well,  —  but  the  moment  he  undertakes  to  establish 
his  feeling  as  a  rule  of  conduct,  we  ask  at  once  how  far 
are  his  own  life  and  deed  in  .accordance  with  what  ho 
/  preaches  1  For  every  man  feels  instinctively  that  all 

I  the  beautiful  sentiments  in  the  world  weigh  less  than  a 

II  single  lovely  action ;  and  that  while  tenderness  of  feeling 
and  susceptibility  to  generous  emotions  are  accidents  of 
temperament,  goodness  is  an  achievement  of  the  will 
and  a  quality  of  the  life.     Fine  words,  says  our  homely 
old  proverb,  butter  no  parsnips ;  and  if  the  question  be 
how  to  render  those  vegetables  palatable,  an  ounce  of 
butter  would  be  worth  more  than  all  the  orations  of 
Cicero.     The  only  conclusive  evidence  of  a  man's  sin 
cerity  is  that  he  give  himself  for  a  principle.     Words, 

/money,  all  things  else,  are  comparatively  easy  to  give 
away ;  but  when  a  man  makes  a  gift  of  his  daily  life  and 
I  practice,  it  is  plain  that  the  truth,  whatever  it  may  be, 
\has  taken  possession  of  him.  From  that  sincerity  his 
words  gain  the  force  and  pertinency  of  deeds,  and  his 
money  is  no  longer  the  pale  drudge  'twixt  man  and  man, 
but,  by  a  beautiful  magic,  what  erewhile  bore  the  image 
and  superscription  of  Csesar  seems  now  to  bear  the  image 
and  superscription  of  God.  It  is  thus  that  there  is  a 


ROUSSEAU  AND  THE  SENTIMENTALISTS.        359 

genius  for  goodness,  for  magnanimity,  for  self-sacrifice, 
as  well  as  for  creative  art ;  and  it  is  thus  that  by  a  more 
refined  sort  of  Platonism  the  Infinite  Beauty  dwells  in 
and  shapes  to  its  own  likeness  the  soul  which  gives  it 
body  and  individuality.  But  when  Moore  charges  genius- 
with  being  an  impostor,  the  confusion  of  his  ideas  is  piti 
able.  VThere  is  nothing  so  true,  so  sincere,  so  downright 
and  forthright,  as  genius.  It  is  always  truer  than  the 
man  himself  is,  greater  than  he.),  If  Shakespeare  the 
man  had  been  as  marvellous  a  creature  as  the  genius 
that  wrote  his  plays,  that  genius  so  comprehensive  in  its 
intelligence,  so  wise  even  in  its  play,  that  its  clowns  are 
moralists  and  philosophers,  so  penetrative  that  a  single 
one  of  its  phrases  reveals  to  us  the  secret  of  our  own 
character,  would  his  contemporaries  have  left  us  so 
wholly  without  record  of  him  as  they  have  done,  distin 
guishing  him  in  no  wise  from  his  fellow-players  ? 

Rousseau,  no  doubt,  was  weak,  nay,  more  than  that, 
was  sometimes  despicable,  but  yet  is  not  fairly  to  be 
reckoned  among  the  4erd  of  sentimentalists.  It  is 
shocking  that  a  man  whose  preaching  made  it  fashion 
able  for  women  of  rank  to  nurse  their  own  children 
should  have  sent  his  own,  as  soon  as  born,  to  the  found 
ling  hospital,  still  more  shocking  that,  in  a  note  to  his 
Discours  sur  Vlnegalite,  he  should  speak  of  this  crime 
as  one  of  the  consequences  of  our  social  system.  But 
for  all  that  there  was  a  faith  and  an  ardor  of  conviction 
in  him  that  distinguish  him  from  most  of  the  writers  of 
his  time.  Nor  were  his  practice  and  his  preaching  al 
ways  inconsistent.  He  contrived  to  pay  regularly,  what 
ever  his  own  circumstances  were,  a  pension  of  one  hun 
dred  livres  a  year  to  a  maternal  aunt  who  had  been  kind 
to  him  in  childhood.  Nor  was  his  asceticism  a  sham. 
He  might  have  turned  his  gift  into  laced  coats  and' 
ckdteaux  as  easily  as  Voltaire,  had  he  not  held  it  too 


360         ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

sacred   to   be   bartered   away  in   any  such   losing   ex 
change. 

But  what  is  worthy  of  especial  remark  is  this,  —  that 
in  nearly  all  that  he  wrote  his  leading  object  was  the 
jgood  of  his  kind,  and  that  through  all  the  vicissitudes 
of  a  life  which  illness,  sensibility  of  temperament,  and 
the  approaches  of  insanity  rendered  wretched,  —  the  as 
sociate  of  infidels,  the  foundling  child,  as  it  were,  of  an 
age  without  belief,  least  of  all  in  itself,  —  he  professed 
and  evidently  felt  deeply  a  faith  in  the  goodness  both  of 
man  and  of  God.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  scoffing  in 
his  writings.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  stereotyped 
morality.  He  does,  not  ignore  the  existence  of  scepti 
cism  •  he  recognizes  its  existence  in  his  own  nature, 
meets  it  frankly  face  to  face,  and  makes  it  confess  that 
there  are  things  in  the  teaching  of  Christ  that  are 
deeper  than  its  doubt.  The  influence  of  his  early  edu 
cation  at  Geneva  is  apparent  here.  An  intellect  so  acute 
as  his,  trained  in  the  school  of  Calvin  in  a  republic  where 
theological  discussion  was  as  much  the  amusement  of 
the  people  as  the  opera  was  at  Paris,  could  not  fail  to  be 
=a  good  logician.  He  had  the  fortitude  to  follow  his  logic 
wherever  it  led  him.  If  the  very  impressibility  of  char 
acter  which  quickened  his  perception  of  the  beauties  of 
nature,  and  made  him  alive  to  the  charm  of  music  and 
musical  expression,  prevented  him  from  being  in  the 
highest  sense  an  original  writer,  and  if  his  ideas  were 
mostly  suggested  to  him  by  books,  yet  the  clearness,  con- 
secutiveness,  and  eloquence  with  which  he  stated  and 
enforced  them  made  them  his  own.  There  was  at  least 
that  original  fire  in  him  which  could  fuse  them  and  run 
them  in  a  novel  mould.  His  power  lay  in  this  very 
ability  of  manipulating  the  thoughts  of  others.  Fond 
of  paradox  he  doubtless  was,  but  he  had  a  way  of  put 
ting  things  that  arrested  attention  and  excited  thought. 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         361 

It  was,  perhaps,  this  very  sensibility  of  the  surround 
ing  atmosphere  of  feeling  and  speculation,  which  made 
Rousseau  more  directly  influential  on  contemporary 
thought  (or  perhaps  we  should  say  sentiment)  than  any 
writer  of  his  time.  And  this  is  rarely  consistent  with 
enduring  greatness  in  literature.  It  forces  us  to  remem 
ber,  against  our  will,  the  oratorical  character  of  his 
works.  They  were  all  pleas,  and  he  a  great  advocate, 
with  Europe  in  the  jury-box.  Enthusiasm  begets  enthu 
siasm,  eloquence  produces  conviction  for  the  moment, 
but  it  is  only  by  truth  to  jiature  and  the  everlasting  in 
tuitions  of  mankind  that  those  abiding  influences  are 
won  that  enlarge  from  generation  to  generation.  Rous 
seau  was  in  many  respects  —  as  great  pleaders  always 
are  —  a  man  of  the  day,  who  must  needs  become  a 
mere  name  to  posterity,  yet  he  could  not  but  have  had 
in  him  some  not  inconsiderable  share  of  that  principle 
by  which  man  eternizes  himself.  For  it  is  only  to  such 
that  the  night  cometh  not  in  which  no  man  shall  work, 
and  he  is  still  operative  both  in  politics  and  literature 
by  the  principles  he  formulated  or  the  emotions  to  which 
he  gave  a  voice  so  piercing  and  so  sympathetic. 

In  judging  Rousseau,  it  would  be  unfair  not  to  take 
note  of  the  malafious^atmosphere  in  which  he  grew  up. 
The  constitution  of  his  mind  was  thus  early  infected 
with  a  feverish  taint  that  made  him  shiveringly  sensi 
tive  to  a  temperature  which  hardier  natures  found  bra 
cing.  To  him  this  rough  world  was  but  too  literally  a 
rack.  Good-humored  Mother  Nature  commonly  imbeds 
the  nerves  of  her  children  in  a  padding  of  self-conceit 
that  serves  as  a  buffer  against  the  ordinary  shocks  to 
which  even  a  life  of  routine  is  liable,  and  it  would  seem 
at  first  sight  as  if  Rousseau  had  been  better  cared  for 
than  usual  in  this  regard.  But  as  his  self-conceit  was 
enormous,  so  was  the  reaction  from  it  proportionate, 
16 


362         ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

and  the  fretting  suspiciousness  of  temper,  sure  mark  of 
an  unsound  mind,  which  rendered  him  incapable  of  inti 
mate  friendship,  while  passionately  longing  for  it,  became 
inevitably,  when  turned  inward,  a  tormenting  self-dis 
trust.  To  dwell  in  unrealities  is  the  doom  of  the  senti 
mentalist  ;  but  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  same 
fitful  intensity  of  emotion  which  makes  them  real  as  the 
means  of  elation,  gives  them  substance  also  for  torture. 
Too  irritably  jealous  to  endure  the  rude  society  of  men, 
he  steeped  his  senses  in  the  enervating  incense  that 
women  are  only  too  ready  to  Jburn.  If  their  friendship 
be  a  safeguard  to  the  other  sex,  their  homage  is  fatal  to 
all  but  the  strongest,  and  EoussgarU  wao  weak  botkjjyjn- 
heritanc^_4ffi<l^aTry^^Lin|ng.  His  fathgr^jvas  one  of 
those  feeble  creatures  for  whom  a  fine  phrase  could  always 
satisfactorily  fill  the  void  that  non-performance  leaves 
behind  it.  If  he  neglected  duty,  he  made  up  for  it  by 
that  cultivation  of  the  finer  sentiments  of  our  common 
nature  which  waters  flowers  of  speech  with  the  brineless 
tears  of  a  flabby  remorse,  without  one  fibre  of  resolve  in 
it,  and  which  impoverishes  the  character  in  proportion  as 
it  enriches  the  vocabulary.  He  was  a  very  Apicius  in 
that  digestible  kind  of  woe  which  makes  no  man  leaner, 
and  had  a  favorite  receipt  for  cooking  you  up  a  sorrow  efc 
la  douleur  inassouvie  that  had  just  enough  delicious  sharp 
ness  in  it  to  bring  tears  into  the  eyes  by  tickling  the  pal 
ate.  "  When  he  said  to  me,  '  Jean  Jacques,  let  us  speak 
of  thy  mother,'  I  said  to  him,  '  Well,  father,  we  are  going 
to  weep,  then,'  and  this  word  alone  drew  tears  from  him. 
'  Ah  ! '  said  he,  groaning,  '  give  her  back  to  me,  console 
me  for  her,  fill  the  void  she  has  left  in  my  soul  I ' ' 
Alas !  in  such  cases,  the  void  she  leaves  is  only  that  she 
found.  The  grief  that  seeks  any  other  than  its  own 
society  will  erelong  want  an  object.  This  admirable 
parent  allowed  his  son  to  become  an  outcast  at  sixteen, 


EOUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         363 

without  any  attempt  to  reclaim  him,  in  order  to  enjoy 
unmolested  a  petty  inheritance  to  which  the  boy  was 
entitled  in  right  of  his  mother.  "  This  conduct,"  Bous- 
seau  tells  us,  "  of  a  father  whose  tenderness  and  virtue 
were  so  well  known  to  me,  caused  me  to  make  reflections 
on  myself  which  have  not  a  little  contributed  to  make 
my  heart  sound.  I  drew  from  it  this  great  maxim  of  \ 
morals,  the  only  one  perhaps  serviceable  in  practice,  to  ' 
avoid  situations  which  put  our  duties  in  opposition  to 
our  interest,  and  which  show  us  our  own  advantage  in 
the  wrong  of  another,  sure  that  in  such  situations,  hoiv- 
ever  sincere  may  be  one's  love  of  virtue,  it  sooner  or  later 
grows  weak  without  our  perceiving  it,  and  that  we  become 
unjust  and  wicked  in  action  without  having  ceased  to  be 
just  and  good  in  soul" 

This  maxim  may  do  for  that  "  fugitive  and  cloistered 
virtue,  unexercised  and  unbreathed,  that  never  sallies 
out  and  seeks  its  adversary,"  which  Milton  could  not 
praise,  —  that  is,  for  a  manhood  whose  distinction  it  is 
not  to  be  manly,  —  but  it  is  chiefly  worth  notice  as  be 
ing  the  characteristic  doctrine  of  sentimentalism.  This 
disjoining  of  deed  from  will,  of  practice  from  theory,  is 
to  put  asunder  what  God  has  joined  by  an  indissoluble 
sacrament.  The  soul  must  be  tainted  before  the  action 
become  corrupt ;  and  there  is  no  self-delusion  more  fatal 
than  that  wrhich  makes  the  conscience  dreamy  with  the 
anodyne  of  lofty  sentiments,  while  the  life  is  grovelling 
and  sensual,  —  witness  Coleridge.  In  his  case  we  feel 
something  like  disgust.  But  where,  as  in  his  son  Hart 
ley,  there  is  hereditary  infirmity,  where  the  man  sees 
the  principle  that  might  rescue  him  slip  from  the  clutch 
of  a  nerveless  will,  like  a  rope  through  the  fingers  of  a 
drowning  man,  and  the  confession  of  faith  is  the  moan 
of  despair,  there  is  room  for  no  harsher  feeling  than  pity. 
Rousseau  showed  through  life  a  singular  proneness  for 


364        ROUSSEAU  AND  THE  SENTIMENTALISTS, 

being  convinced  by  his  own  eloquence  ;  he  was  always 
his  own  first  convert ;  and  this  reconciles  his  power  as  a 
writer  with  his  weakness  as  a  man.  He  and  all  like  him 
mistake  emotion  for  convictionj^yelleity  for  resolve,  the 
brief  eddy  of  sentiment  for  the  midcurrent  of  ever- 
gathering  faith  in  duty  that  draws  to  itself  all  the 
affluents  of  conscience  and  will,  and  gives  continuity 
of  purpose  to  life.  They  are  like  men  who  love  the 
stimulus  of  being  under  conviction,  as  it  is  called,  who, 
forever  getting  religion,  never  get  capital  enough  to 
retire  upon  and  spend  for  their  own  need  and  the  com 
mon  service. 

The  sentimentalist  is  the  spiritual  hypochondriac, 
with  whom  fancies  become  facts,  while  facts  are  a  dis- 
'  comfort  because  they  will  not  be  evaporated  into  fancy. 
In  his  eyes,  Theory  is  too  fine  a  dame  to  confess  even  a 
country-cousinship  with  coarse-handed  Practice,  whose 
homely  ways  would  disconcert  her  artificial  world.  The 
very  susceptibility  that  makes  him  quick  to  feeV  makes 
him  also  incapable  of  deep  and  durable  feeling.  He 
loves  to  think  he  suffers,  and  keeps  a  pet  sorrow,  a  blue- 
devil  familiar,  that  goes  with  him  everywtruiij,  like  Para- 
celsus's  black  dog.  He  takes  good  care,  however,  that 
it  shall  not  be  the  true  sulphurous  article  that  sometimes 
takes  a  fancy  to  fly  away  with  his  conjurer.  Rene  says  : 
"  In  my  madness  I  had  gone  so  far  as  even  to  wish  I 
might  experience  a  misfortune,  so  that  my  suffering 
might  at  least  have  a  real  object."  But  no  ;  selfishness 
is  only  active  egotism,  and  there  is  nothing  and  nobody, 
with  a  single  exception,  which  this  sort  of  creature  will 
not  sacrifice,  rather  than  give  any  other  than  an  imagi 
nary  pang  to  his  idol.  Vicarious  pain  he  is  not  unwill 
ing  to  endure,  nay,  will  even  commit  suicide  by  proxy, 
like  the  German  poet  who  let  his  wife  kill  herself  to  give 
him  a  sensation.  Had  young  Jerusalem  been  anything 


ROUSSEAU  AXD  THE  SEXTDIEXTALISTS.         365 

like  Goethe's  portrait  of  him  in  Werther,  he  would  have 
taken  very  good  care  not  to  blow  out  the  brains  which 
he  would  have  thought  only  too  precious.  Real  sorrows 
are  uncomfortable  things,  but  purely  aesthetic  ones  are  I 
by  no  means  unpleasant,  and  I  have  always  fancied 
the  handsome  young  Wolfgang  writing  those  distracted 
letters  to  Auguste  Stolberg  with  a  looking-glass  in  front 
of  hini  to  give  hack  an  image  of  his  desolation,  and  finding 
it  rather  pleasant  than  otherwise  to  shed  the  tear  of 
sympathy  with  self  that  would  seem  so  bitter  to  his  fair 
correspondent.  The  tears  that  have  real  salt  in  them 
will  keep ;  they  are  the  difficult,  manly  tears  that  are 
shed  in  secret ;  but  the  pathos  soon  evaporates  from 
that  fresh-water  with  which  a  man  can  bedew  a  dead 
donkey  in  public,  while  his  wife  is  having  a  good  cry 
over  his  neglect  of  her  at  home.  We  do  not  think  the 
worse  of  Goethe  for  hypothetically  desolating  himself 
in  the  fashion  aforesaid,  for  with  many  constitutions 
it  is  as  purely  natural  a  crisis  as  dentition,  which  the 
stronger  worry  through,  and  turn  out  very  sensible, 
agreeable  fellows.  But  where  there  is  an  arrest  of  de 
velopment,  and  the  heartbreak  of  the  patient  is  audibly 
prolonged  through  life,  we  have  a  spectacle  which  the 
toughest  heart  would  wish  to  get  as  far  away  from  as 
possible. 

We  would  not  be  supposed  to  overlook  the  distinction, 
too  often  lost  sight  of,  between  sentimentalism  and  sen 
timent,  the  latter  being  a  very  excellent  thing  in  its  way, 
as  genuine  things  are  apt  to  be.     Sentiment  is  intellec-  \ 
tualized  emotion,  emotion  precipitated,   as  it  were,  in  I 
pretty  crystals  by  the  fancy.     This  is  the  delightful  sta-  *f 
pie  of  the  poets  of  social  life  like  Horace  and  Beranger,   ' 
or  Thackeray,  when  he  too  rarely  played  with  verse.     It 
puts  into  words  for  us  that  decorous  average  of  feeling 
to  the  expression  of  which  society  can  consent  without 


366         ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

danger  of  being  indiscreetly  moved.  It  is  excellent  for 
people  who  are  willing  to  save  their  souls  alive  to  any 
extent  that  shall  not  be  discomposing.  It  is  even  satis 
fying  till  some  deeper  experience  has  given  us  a  hunger 
which  what  we  so  glibly  call  "the  world"  cannot  sate, 
just  as  a  water-ice  is  nourishment  enough  to  a  man  who 
has  had  his  dinner.  It  is  the  sufficing  lyrical  interpreter 
of  those  lighter  hours  that  should  make  part  of  every 
healthy  man's  day,  and  is  noxious  only  when  it  palls 
men's  appetite  for  the  truly  profound  poetry  which  is 
very  passion  of  very  soul  sobered  by  afterthought  and 
embodied  in  eternal  types  by  imagination.  True  senti 
ment  is  emotion  ripened  by  a  slow  ferment  of  the  mind 
and  qualified  to  an  agreeable  temperance  by  that  taste 
which  is  the  conscience  of  polite  society.  But  the  senti 
mentalist  always  insists  on  taking  his  emotion  neat,  and, 
as  his  sense  gradually  deadens  to  the  stimulus,  increases 
his  dose  till  he  ends  in  a  kind  of  moral  deliquium.  At 
first  the  debaucher,  he  becomes  at  last  the  victim  of  his 
sensations. 

Among  the  ancients  we  find  no  trace  of  sentimental- 
ism.  Their  masculine  mood  both  of  body  and  mind  left 
no  room  for  it,  and  hence  the  bracing  quality  of  their 
literature  compared  with  that  of  recent  times,  its  tonic 
property,  that  seems  almost  too  astringent  to  palates  re 
laxed  by  a  daintier  diet.  ^The  first  great  example  of  the 
degenerate  modern  tendency  was  Petrarch,  who  may  be 
said  to  have  given  it  impulse  and  direction.  A  more 
perfect  specimen  of  the  type  has  not  since  appeared. 
An  intellectual  voluptuary,  a  moral  dilettante,  the  first 
instance  of  that  character,  since  too  common,  the  gen 
tleman  in  search  of  a  sensation,  seeking  a  solitu3e"'aT 
Vaucluse  because  it  made  him  more  likely  to  be  in  de 
mand  at  Avignon,  praising  philosophic  poverty  with  a 
sharp  eye  to  the  next  rich  benefice  in  the  gift  of  his 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         367 

patron,  commending  a  good  life  but  careful  first   of  a 
good  living,  happy  only  in  seclusion  but  making  a  dan 
gerous  journey  to  enjoy  the  theatrical  show  of  a  corona 
tion  in  the  Capitol,  cherishing  a  fruitless  passion  which 
broke  his  heart  three  or  four  times  a  year  and  yet  could 
not  make  an  end  of  him  till  he  had  reached  the  ripe  age 
of  seventy  and  survived  his  mistress  a  quarter  of  a  cen-     / 
tury,  —  surely  a  more  exquisite  perfection  of  inconsis-  / 
tency  would  be  hard  to  find. 

When  Petrarch  returned  from  his  journey  into  the 
North  of  Europe  in  1332,  he  balanced  the  books  of  his 
unrequited  passion,  and,  finding  that  he  had  now  been 
in  love  seven  years,  thought  the  time  had  at  last  come 
to  call  deliberately  on  Death.  Had  Death  taken  him  at 
his  word,  he  would  have  protested  that  he  was  only  in 
fun.  For  we  find  him  always  taking  good  care  of  an  ex 
cellent  constitution,  avoiding  the  plague  with  commend 
able  assiduity,  and  in  the  very  year  when  he  declares  it 
absolutely  essential  to  his  peace  of  mind  to  die  for  good 
and  all,  taking  refuge  in  the  fortress  of  Capranica,  from 
a  wholesome  dread  of  having  his  throat  cut  by  robbers. 
There  is  such  a  difference  between  dying  in  a  sonnet 
with  a  cambric  handkerchief  at  one's  eyes,  and  the  pro 
saic  reality  of  demise  certified  in  the  parish  register! 
Practically  it  is  inconvenient  to  be  dead.  Among  other 
things,  it  puts  an  end  to  the  manufacture  of  sonnets.7 
But  there  seems  to  have  been  an  excellent  understanding 
between  Petrarch  and  Death,  for  he  was  brought  to  that 
grisly  monarch's  door  so  often,  that,  otherwise,  nothing 
short  of  a  miracle  or  the  nine  lives  of  that  animal  whom 
love  also  makes  lyrical  could  have  saved  him.  "  I  con 
sent,"  he  cries,  "  to  live  and  die  in  Africa  among  its 
serpents,  upon  Caucasus,  or  Atlas,  if,  while  I  live,  to 
breathe  a  pure  air,  and  after  my  death  a  little  corner 
of  earth  where  to  bestow  my  body,  may  be  allowed  me. 


368         ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

This  is  all  I  ask,  but  this  I  cannot  obtain.  Doomed  al 
ways  to  wander,  and  to  be  a  stranger  everywhere,  0 
Fortune,  Fortune,  fix  me  at  last  to  some  one  spot !  I 
do  not  covet  thy  favors.  Let  me  enjoy  a  tranquil  pov 
erty,  let  me  pass  in  this  retreat  the  few  days  that  remain 
to  me  !  "  The  pathetic  stop  of  Petrarch's  poetical  organ 
was  one  he  could  pull  out  at  pleasure,  —  and  indeed  we 
soon  learn  to  distrust  literary  tears,  as  the  cheap  subter- 
jfuge  for  want  of  real  feeling  with  natures  of  this  qual- 
iity.  Solitude  with  him  was  but  the  pseudonyme  of  no 
toriety.  Poverty  was  the  archdeaconry  of  Parma,  with 
other  ecclesiastical  pickings.  During  his  retreat  at  Vau- 
cluse,  in  the  very  height  of  that  divine  sonneteering  love 
of  Laura,  of  that  sensitive  purity  which  called  Avignon 
Babylon,  and  rebuked  the  sinfulness  of  Clement,  he  was 
himself  begetting  that  kind  of  children  which  we  spell 
with  a  b.  We  believe  that,  if  Messer  Francesco  had  been 
present  when  the  woman  was  taken  in  adultery,  he 
would  have  flung  the  first  stone  without  the  slightest 
feeling  of  inconsistency,  nay,  with  a  sublime  sense  of 
virtue.  The  truth  is,  that  it  made  very  little  difference 
to  him  what  sort  of  proper  sentiment  he  expressed,  pro 
vided  he  could  do  it  elegantly  and  with  unction. 

Would  any  one  feel  the  difference  between  his  faint 
abstractions  and  the  Platonism  of  a  powerful  nature 
fitted  alike  for  the  withdrawal  of  ideal  contemplation 
and  for  breasting  the  storms  of  life,  —  would  any  one 
know  how  wide  a  depth  divides  a  noble  friendship  based 
on  sympathy  of  pursuit  and  aspiration,  on  that  mutual 
help  which  souls  capable  of  self-sustainment  are  the 
readiest  to  give  or  to  take,  and  a  simulated  passion,  true 
neither  to  the  spiritual  nor  the  sensual  part  of  man,  — • 
let  him  compare  the  sonnets  of  Petrarch  with  those  which 
Michel  Angelo  addressed  to  Yittoria  Colonna.  In  them 
the  airiest  pinnacles  of  sentiment  and  speculation  are  but- 


BOUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         369 

tressed  with   solid  mason-work  of  thought,  and  of  an 
actual,  not  fancied  experience,  and  the  depth  of  feeling 
is  measured  by  the  sobriety  and  reserve  of  expression, 
while  in  Petrarch's  all  ingenuousness  is  frittered  away 
into  ingenuity.     Both  are  cold,  but  the  coldness  of  the 
one  is  self-restraint,  while  the  other  chills  with  pretence 
of   warmth.      In   Michel  Angelo's,  you  feel  the  great  \/ 
architect ;  in  Petrarch's  the  artist  who  can  best  realize 
his  conception  in  the  limits  of  a  cherry-stone.     And  yet 
this  man  influenced  literature  longer  and  more  widely 
than   almost   any  other  in  modern  times.     So  great  is    \ 
the  charm  of  elegance,  so  unreal  is  the  larger  part  of     I 
what  is  written  ! 

Certainly  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  a  work  of  art  j 
should  be  looked  at  by  the  light  of  the  artist's  biogra-  / 
phy,  or  measured  by  our  standard  of  his  character.  Nor 
do  I  reckon  what  was  genuine  in  Petrarch  —  his  love 
of  letters,  his  refinement,  his  skill  in  the  superficial 
graces  of  language,  that  rhetorical  art  by  which  the 
music  of  words  supplants  their  meaning,  and  the  verse 
moulds  the  thought  instead  of  being  plastic  to  it  — 
after  any  such  fashion.  I  have  no  ambition  for  that 
character  of  valet  de  chambre  which  is  said  to  disenchant 
the  most  heroic  figures  into  mere  every-day  personages, 
for  it  implies  a  mean  soul  no  less  than  a  servile  condi 
tion.  But  we  have  a  right  to  demand  a  certain  amount 
of  reality,  however  small,  in  the  emotion  of  a  man  who 
makes  it  his  business  to  endeavor  at  exciting  our  own. 
We  have  a  privilege  of  nature  to  shiver  before  a  painted 
flame,  how  cunningly  soever  the  colors  be  laid  on.  Yet 
our  love  of  minute  biographical  detail,  our  desire  to 
make  ourselves  spies  upon  the  men  of  the  past,  seems 
so  much  of  an  instinct  in  us,  that  we  must  look  for  the 
spring  of  it  in  human  nature,  and  that  somewhat  deeper 
than  mere  curiosity  or  love  of  gossip.  It  should  seem 
16*  '  x 


370         ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

to  arise  from  what  mast  bo  considered  on  the  whole  a 
creditable  feeling,  namely,  that  we  value  character  more 
than  any  amount  of  talent,  —  the  skill  to  be  something, 
above  that  of  doing  anything  but  the  best  of  its  kind. 
The  highest  creative  genius,  and  that  only,  is  privileged 
from  arrest  by  this  personality,  for  there 'the  thing  pro 
duced  is  altogether  disengaged  from  the  producer.  But 
in  natures  incapable  of  this  escape  from  themselves,  the 
author  is  inevitably  mixed  with  his  work,  and  we  have 

I  a  feeling  that  the  amount  of   his  sterling  character  is 
the  security  for  the  notes  he  issues.     Especially  we  feel 
so  when  truth  to  self,  which  is  always  self-forgetful,  and 
not  truth  to  nature,  makes  an  essential  part  of  the  value 
of  what  is  offered  us ;  as  where  a  man  undertakes  to 
narrate  personal  experience  or  to  enforce  a  dogma.    This 
is  particularly  true  as  respects  sentimentalists,  because 
of  their  intrusive  self-consciousness ;  for  there  is  no  more 
universal  characteristic  of  human  nature   than  the  in 
stinct  of  men  to  apologize  to  themselves  for  themselves, 
and  to  justify  personal  failings  by  generalizing  them  into 
universal  laws.     A  man  would  be  the  keenest  devil's 
advocate  against  himself,  were  it  not  that  he  has  always 
taken  a  retaining  fee  for  the  defence  ;  for  we  think  that 
the  indirect  and  mostly  unconscious  pleas  in  abatement 
which  we  read  between  the  lines  in  the  works  of  many 
authors  arc  oftcner  written  to  set  themselves  right  in 
their  own  eyes  than  in  those  of  the  world.     And  in  the 
real  life  of  the  sentimentalist  it  is  the  same.     He  is  un 
der  the  wretched  necessity  of  keeping  up,  at  least  in 
public,  the  character  he  has  assumed,   till  he  at  last 
reaches  that  last  shift  of  bankrupt  self-respect,  to  play 
the  hypocrite  with  himself.     Lamartine,  after  passing 
round  the  hat  in  Europe  and  America,  takes  to  his  bed 
from  wounded  pride  when  the  French  Senate  votes  him 
a  subsidy,  and  sheds  tears  of  humiliation.  <  Ideally,  he 


ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         371 

resents  it ;  in  practical  coin,  he  will  accept  the  shame 
without  a  wry  face. 

George  Sand,  speaking  of  Rousseau's  "Confessions," 
says  that  an  autobiographer  always  makes  himself  the 
hero  of  his  own  novel,  and  cannot  help  idealizing,  even 
if  he  would.  But  the  weak  point  of  all  sentimentalistsV 
is  that  they  always  have  been,  and  always  continue  un-  j 
der  every  conceivable  circumstance  to  be,  their  own 
ideals,  whether  they  are  writing  their  own  lives  or  no.  ' 
Rousseau  opens  his  book  with  the  statement :  "I  am  not 
made  like  any  of  those  I  have  seen ;  I  venture  to  believe 
myself  unlike  any  that  exists.  If  I  am  not  worth  more, 
at  least  I  am  different."  0  exquisite  cunning  of  self- 
flattery  !  It  is  this  very  imagined  difference  that  makes 
us  worth  more  in  our  own  foolish  sight.  For  while  all 
men  are  apt  to  think,  or  to  persuade  themselves  that 
they  think,  all  other  men  their  accomplices  in  vice  or 
weakness,  they  are  not  difficult  of  belief  that  they  are 
singular  in  any  quality  or  talent  on  which  they  hug 
themselves.  More  than  this ;  people  who  are  truly  \ 
original  are  the  last  to  find  it  out,  for  the  moment  we  / 
become  conscious  of  a  virtue  it  has  left  us  or  is  getting  ' 
ready  to  go.  Originality  does  not  consist  in  a  fidgety 
assertion  of  selfhood,  but  in  the  faculty  of  getting  rid 
of  it  altogether,  that  the  truer  genius  of  the  man,  which 
commerces  with  universal '  nature  and  with  other  souls 
through  a  common  sympathy  with  that,  may  take  all 
his  powers  wholly  to  itself,  —  and  the  truly  original 
man  could  no  more  be  jealous  of  his  peculiar  gift,  than 
the  grass  could  take  credit  to  itself  for  being  green. 
What  is  the  reason  that  all  children  are  geniuses, 
(though  they  contrive  so  soon  to  outgrow  that  dan 
gerous  quality,)  except  that  they  never  cross-examine 
themselves  on  the  subject]  The  moment  that  process 
begins,  their  speech  loses  its  gift  of  unexpectedness, 


372         EOUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

and  they  become  as  tediously  impertinent  as  the  rest 
of  us. 

If  there  never  was  any  one  like  him,  if  he  constituted 
a  genus  in  himself,  to  what  end  write  confessions  in 
which  no  other  human  being  could  ever  be  in  a  condi 
tion  to  take  the  least  possible  interest  1  All  men  are 
interested  in  Montaigne  in  proportion  as  all  men  find 
more  of  themselves  in  him,  and  all  men  see  but  one 
image  in  the  glass  which  the  greatest  of  poets  holds  up 
to  nature,  an  image  which  at  once  startles  and  charms 
them  with  its  familiarity.  Fabulists  always  endow  their 
animals  with  the  passions  and  desires  of  men.  But  if 
an  ox  could  dictate  his  confessions,  what  glimmer  of  un 
derstanding  should  we  find  in  those  bovine  confidences, 
unless  on  some  theory  of  pre-existence,  some  blank  mis 
giving  of  a  creature  moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized  1 
The  truth  is,  that  we  recognize  the  common  humanity 
of  Rousseau  in  the  very  weakness  that  betrayed  him  into 
this  conceit  of  himself;  we  find  he  is  just  like  the  rest 
of  us  in  this  very  assumption  of  essential  difference,  for 
among  all  animals  man  is  the  only  one  who  tries  to  pass 
for  more  than  he  is,  and  so  involves  himself  in  the  con 
demnation  of  seeming  less. 

But  it  would  be  sheer  waste  of  time  to  hunt  Rousseau 
through  all  his  doublings  of  inconsistency,  and  run  him 
to  earth  in  every  new  paradox.  His  first  two  books  at 
tacked,  one  of  them  literature,  and  the  other  society. 
But  this  did  not  prevent  him  from  being  diligent  with 
his  pen,  nor  from  availing  himself  of  his  credit  with  per 
sons  who  enjoyed  all  the  advantages  of  that  inequality 
whose  evils  he  had  so  pointedly  exposed.  Indeed,  it  is 
curious  how  little  practical  communism  there  has  been, 
how  few  professors  it  has  had  who  would  not  have  gained 
by  a  general  dividend.  It  is  perhaps  no  frantic  effort  of 
generosity  in  a  philosopher  with  ten  crowns  in  his  pocket 


when  he  offers  to  make  common  stock  with  a  neighbor 
who  has  ten  thousand  of  yearly  income,  nor  is  it  an  un 
common  thing  to  see  such  theories  knocked  clean  out  of 
a  man's  head  by  the  descent  of  a  thumping  legacy. 
But,  consistent  or  not,  Rousseau  remains  permanently  \] 
interesting  as  the  highest  and  most  perfect  type  of  the  H 
sentimentalist  of  genius.  His  was  perhaps  the  acutest  "' 
mind  that  was  ever  mated  with  an  organization  so  dis 
eased,  the  brain  most  far-reaching  in  speculation  that 
ever  kept  itself  steady  and  worked  out  its  problems  amid 
such  disordered  tumult  of  the  nerves.*  His  letter  to  the 
Archbishop  of  Paris,  admirable  for  its  lucid  power  and 
soberness  of  tone,  and  his  Rousseau  juge  de  Jean  Jacques, 
which  no  man  can  read  and  believe  him  to  have  been 
sane,  show  him  to  us  in  his  strength  and  weakness, 
and  give  us  a  more  charitable,  let  us  hope  therefore  a 
truer,  notion  of  him  than  his  own  apology  for  himself. 
That  he  was  a  man  of  genius  appears  unmistakably  in 
his  impressibility  by  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  epoch  in 
which  he  lived.  Before  an  eruption,  clouds  steeped 
through  and  through  with  electric  life  gather  over  the 
crater,  as  if  in  sympathy  and  expectation.  As  the 
mountain  heaves  and  cracks,  these  vapory  masses'  are 
seamed  with  fire,  as  if  they  felt  and  answered  the  dumb 
agony  that  is  struggling  for  utterance  below.  Just  such 
flashes  of  eager  sympathetic  fire  break  continually  from 
the  cloudy  volumes  of  Rousseau,  the  result  at  once  and 
the  warning  of  that  convulsion  of  which  Paris  was  to  be 
the  crater  and  all  Europe  to  feel  the  spasm.  There  are 
symptoms  enough  elsewhere  of  that  want  of  faith  in  the 
existing  order  which  made  the  Revolution  inevitable,  — 
even  so  shallow  an  observer  as  Horace  Walpolc  could 
forebode  it  so  early  as  1 7G5,  —  but  Rousseau  more  than 
all  others  is  the  unconscious  expression  of  the  groping 
*  Perhaps  we  should  except  Newton.  • 


374         ROUSSEAU   ANT>   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

after  something  radically  new,  the  instinct  for  a  chancre 
that  should  be  organic  and  pervade  every  fibre  of  the 
social  and  political  body.  Freedom  of  thought  owes  far 
more  to  the  jester  Voltaire,  who  also  had  his  solid  kernel 
of  earnest,  than  to  the  sombre  Genevese,  whose  earnest 
ness  is  of  the  deadly  kind.  Yet,  for  good  or  evil,  the 
latter  was  the  father  of  modern  democracy,  antl  with 
out  him  our  Declaration  of  Independence  would  have 
wanted  some  of  those  sentences  in  which  the  imme 
morial  longings  of  the  poor  and  the  dreanjis  of  soli 
tary  enthusiasts  were  at  last  affirmed  as  ''axioms  in 
the  manifesto  of  a  nation,  so  that  all  the  world  might 
hear. 

Though  Rousseau,  like  many  other  fanatics,  had  a  re 
markable  vein  of  common  sense  in  him,  (witness  his 
remarks  on  duelling,  on  landscape-gardening,  on  French 
poetry,  and  much  of  his  thought  on  education,)  we  can 
not  trace  many  practical  results  to  his  teaching,  least  of 
all  in  politics.  For  the  great  difficulty  with  his  system, 
if  system  it  may  be  called,  is,  that,  while  it  professes  to 
follow  nature,  it  not  only  assumes  as  a  starting-point 
that  the  individual  man  may  be  made  over  again,  but 
proceeds  to  the  conclusion  that  man  himself,  that  human 
nature,  must  be  made  over  again,  and  governments  re 
modelled  on  a  purely  theoretic  basis.  But  when  some 
thing  like  an  experiment  in  this  direction  was  made  in 
1789,  not  only  did  it  fail  as  regarded  man  in  general,  but 
even  as  regards  the  particular  variety  of  man  that  in 
habited  France.  The  Revolution  accomplished  many 
changes,  and  beneficent  ones,  yet  it  left  France  peopled, 
not  by  a  new  race  without  traditions,  but  by  French 
men.  Still,  there  could  not  but  be  a  wonderful  force  in 
the  words  of  a  man  who,  above  all  others,  had  the  secret 
of  making  abstractions  glow  with  his  own  fervor ;  and 
his  ideas  —  dispersed  now  in  the  atmosphere  of  thought 


ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         375 

—  have  influenced,  perhaps  still  continue  to  influence, 
speculative  minds,  which  prefer  swift  and  sure  generali 
zation  to  hesitating  and  doubtful  experience. 

Rousseau  has,  in  one  respect,  been  utterly  misrepre 
sented  and  misunderstood.  Even  Chateaubriand  most 
unfilially  classes  him  and  Voltaire  together.  It  appears 
to  me  that  the  inmost  core  of  his  being  was  religious. 
Had  he  remained  in  the  Catholic  Church  he  might  have 
been  a  saint.  Had.  he  come  earlier,  he  might  have 
founded  an  order.  His  was  precisely  the  nature  on 
which  religious  enthusiasm  takes  the  strongest  hold,  —  a 
temperament  which  finds  a  sensuous  delight  in  spiritual 
things,  and  satisfies  its  craving  for  excitement  with 
celestial  debauch.  He  had  not  the  iron  temper  of  a 
great  reformer  and  organizer  like  Knox,  who,  true  Scotch 
man  that  he  was,  found  a  way  to  weld  this  world  and 
the  other  together  in  a  cast-iron  creed  ;  but  he  had  as 
much  as  any  man  ever  had  that  gift  of  a  great  preacher 
to  make  the  oratorical  fervor  which  persuades  himself 
while  it  lasts  into  the  abiding  conviction  of  his  hearers. 
That  very  persuasion  of  his  that  the  soul  could  remain 
pure  while  the  life  was  corrupt,  is  not  unexampled  among 
men  who  have  left  holier  names  than  he.  His  "  Con 
fessions,"  also,  would  assign  him  to  that  class  with  whom 
the  religious  sentiment  is  strong,  and  the  moral  nature 
weak.  They  are  apt  to  believe  that  they  may,  as  special 
pleaders  say,  confess  and  avoid.  Hawthorne  has  admi 
rably  illustrated  this  in  the  penance  of  Mr.  Dimmesdale. 
With  all  the  soil  that  is  upon  Rousseau,  I  cannot  help 
looking  on  him  as  one  capable  beyond  any  in  his  genera 
tion  of  being  divinely  possessed  ;  and  if  it  happened 
otherwise,  when  we  remember  the  much  that  hindered 
and  the  little  that  helped  in  a  life  and  time  like  his,  we 
shall  be  much  readier  to  pity  than  to  condemn.  It  was 
his  very  fitness  for  being  something  better  that  makes 


376         ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

him  able  to  shock  us  so  with  what  in  too  many  respects 
he  unhappily  was.  Less  gifted,  he  had  been  less  hardly 
judged.  More  than  any  other  of  the  sentimentalists, 
except  possibly  Sterne,  he  had  in  him  a  staple  of  sincer 
ity.  Compared  with  Chateaubriand,  he  is  honesty,  com 
pared  with  Lamartine,  he  is  manliness  itself.  His  near 
est  congener  in  our  own  tongue  is  Cowper. 

In  the  whole  school  there  is  a  sickly  taint.  The 
strongest  mark  which  Rousseau  has  left  upon  literature 
is  a  sensibility  to  the  picturesque  in 'Nature,  not  with 
Cature  as  a  strengthcner  and  consoler,  a  wholesome 
tonic  for  a  mind  ill  at  ease  with  itself,  but  with  Nature 
is  a  kind  of  feminine  echo  to  the  mood,  flattering  it 
rith  sympathy  rather  than  correcting  it  with  rebuke  or 
^lifting  it  away  from  its  unmanly  depression,  as  in  the 
wholesomcr  fellow-feeling  of  Wordsworth.  They  seek 
in  her  an  accessary,  and  not  a  reproof.  It  is  less  a  sym 
pathy  with  Nature  than  a  sympathy  with  ourselves  as 
we  compel  her  to  reflect  us.  It  is  solitude,  Nature  for 
her  estrangement  from  man,  not  for  her  companionship 
with  him,  —  it  is  desolation  and  ruin,  Nature  as  she  has 
triumphed  over  man,  —  with  which  this  order  of  mind 
seeks  communion  and  in  which  it  finds  solace.  It  is 
with  the  hostile  and  destructive  power  of  matter,  and 
not  with  the  spirit  of  life  and  renewal  that  dwells  in  it, 
that  they  ally  themselves.  And  in  human  character  it 
is  the  same.  St.  Prcux,  Rene,  Werther,  Manfred,  Quasi- 
i  modo,  they  are  all  anomalies,  distortions,  ruins,  —  so 
.\much  easier  is  it  to  caricature  life  from  our  own  sickly 
conception  of  it,  than  to  paint  it  in  its  noble  simplicity; 
so  much  cheaper  is  unreality  than  truth. 

Every  man  is  conscious  that  he  leads  two  lives,  —  the 
one  trivial  and  ordinary,  the  other  sacred  and  recluse ; 
one  which  he  carries  to  society  and  the  dinner-table,  the 
other  in  which  his  youth  and  aspiration  survive  for  him, 


ROUSSEAU   AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         377 

and  which  is  a  confidence  between  himself  and  God. 
Both  may  be  equally  sincere,  and  there  need  be  no  con- 
tradiction  between  them,  any  more  than  in  a  healthy  man 
between  soul  and  body.  If  the  higher  life  be  real  and 
earnest,  its  result,  whether  in  literature  or  affairs,  will 
be  real  and  earnest  too.  But  no  man  can  produce  great  t 
things  who  is  not  thoroughly  sincere  in  dealing  with 
himself,  who  would  not  exchange  the  finest  show  for  the 
poorest  reality,  who  does  not  so  love  his  work  that  he  is 
not  only  glad  to  give  himself  for  it,  but  finds  rather  a 
gain  than  a  sacrifice  in  the  surrender.  The  sentimental 
ist  does  not  think  of  what  he  does  so  much  as  of  what 
the  world  will  think  of  what  he  does.  He  translates 
should  into  would,  looks  upon  the  spheres  of  duty  and 
beauty  as  alien  to  each  other,  and  can  never  learn  how 
life  rounds  itself  to  a  noble  completeness  between  these 
two  opposite  but  mutually  sustaining  poles  of  what  we 
long  for  and  what  we  must. 

Did  Rousseau,  then,  lead  a  life  of  this 'quality?  Per 
haps,  when  we  consider  the  contrast  which  every  man 
who  looks  backward  must  feel  between  the  life  he  planned 
and  the  life  which  circumstance  within  him  and  without 
him  has  made  for  him,  we  should  rather  ask,  Was  this 
the  life  he  meant  to  lead  1  Perhaps,  when  we  take  into 
account  his  faculty  of  self-deception,  —  it  may  be  no 
greater  than  our  own,  —  we  should  ask,  Was  this  the 
life  he  believed  he  led  1  Have  we  any  right  to  judge 
this  man  after  our  blunt  English  fashion,  and  condemn 
him,  as  we  are  wont  to  do,  on  the  finding  of  a  jury  of 
average  householders  ?  Is  French  reality  precisely  our 
reality  1  Could  we  tolerate  tragedy  in  rhymed  alexan 
drines,  instead  of  blank  verse  1  The  whole  life  of  Rous 
seau  is  pitched  on  this  heroic  key,  and  for  the  most 
trivial  occasion  he  must  be  ready  with  the  sublime  senti 
ments  that  are  supposed  to  suit  him  rather  than  it.  It 


378         ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

is  one  of  the  most  curious  features  of  the  sentimental 
ailment,  that,  while  it  shuns  the  contact  of  men,  it 
courts  publicity.  In  proportion  as  solitude  and  com 
munion  with  self  lead  the  sentimentalist  to  exaggerate 
the  importance  of  his  own  personality,  he  comes  to 
think  that  the  least  event  connected  with  it  is  of  conse 
quence  to  his  fellow-men.  If  he  change  his  shirt,  he 
would  have  mankind  aware  of  it.  Victor  Hugo,  the 
greatest  living  representative  of  the  class,  considers  it 
necessary  to  let  the  world  know  by  letter  from  time 
to  time  his  opinions  on  every  conceivable  subject  about 
which  it  is-  not  asked  nor  is  of  the  least  value  unless 
we  concede  to  him  an  immediate  inspiration.  We 
men  of  colder  blood,  in  whom  self-consciousness  takes 
the  form  of  pride,  and  who  have  deified  mauvaise  honte 
as  if  our  defect  were  our  virtue,  find  it  especially  hard 
to  understand  that  artistic  impulse  of  more  southern 
races  to  pose  themselves  properly  on  every  occasion,  and 
not  even  to  die  without  some  tribute  of  deference  to  the 
taste  of  the  world  they  are  leaving.  Was  not  even 
mighty  Csesar's  last  thought  of  his  drapery?  Let  us 
not  condemn  Rousseau  for  what  seems  to  us  the  inde 
cent  exposure  of  himself  in  his  "Confessions." 

Those  who  allow  an  oratorical  and  purely  conventional 
side  disconnected  with  our  private  understanding  of  the 
facts,  and  with  life,  in  which  everything  has  a  wholly 
parliamentary  sense  where  truth  is  made  subservient  to  . 
the  momentary  exigencies  of  eloquence,  should  be  chari 
table  to  Rousseau.  While  we  encourage  a  distinction 
which  establishes  two  kinds  of  truth,  one  for  the  world, 
and  another  for  the  conscience,  while  we  take  pleasure  in 
a  kind  of  speech  that  has  no  relation  to  the  real  thought 
of  speaker  or  hearer,  but  to  the  rostrum  only,  we  must 
not  be  hasty  to  condemn  a  sentimentalism  which  we  do 
our  best  to  foster.  We  listen  in  public  with  the  gravity 


ROUSSEAU  AND  THE   SENTIMENTALISTS.         379 

oi  augurs  to  what  we  smile  at  when  we  meet  a  brother 
adept.  France  is  the  native  land  of  eulogy,  of  truth 
padded  out  to  the  size  and  shape  demanded  by  comme-il- 
faut.  The  French  Academy  has,  perhaps,  done  more 
harm  by  the  vogue  .it  has  given  to  this  style,  than  it  has 
done  good  by  its  literary  purism ;  for  the  best  purity  of 
a  language  depends  on  the  limpidity  of  its  source  in 
veracity  of  thought.  Rousseau  was  in  many  respects  a 
typical  Frenchman,  and  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  he 
too  often  fell  in  with  the  fashion  of  saying  what  was  ex 
pected  of  him,  and  what  he  thought  due  to  the  situation, 
rather  than  what  would  have  been  true  to  his  inmost 
consciousness.  Perhaps  we  should  allow  something  also 
to  the  influence  of  a  Calvinistic  training,  which  certainly 
helps  men  who  have  the  least  natural  tendency  towards 
it  to  set  faith  above  works,  and  to  persuade  themselves 
of  the  efficacy  of  an  inward  grace  to  offset  an  outward 
and  visible  defection  from  it. 

As  the  sentimentalist  always  takes  a  fanciful,  some 
times  an  unreal,  life  for  an  ideal  one,  it  would  be  too 
much  to  say  that  Rousseau  was  a  man  of  earnest  convic 
tions.  But  he  was  a  man  of  fitfully  intense  ones,  as 
suited  so  mobile  a  temperament,  and  his  writings,  more 
than  those  of  any  other  of  his  tribe,  carry  with  them 
that  persuasion  that  was  in  him  while  he  wrote.  In 
them  at  least  he  is  as  consistent  as  a  man  who  admits 
new  ideas  can  ever  be.  The  children  of  his  brain  he 
never  abandoned,  but  clung  to  them  with  paternal  fidel 
ity.  Intellectually  he  was  true  and  fearless ;  constitu- 
tionfllly,  timid,  contradictory,  and  weak ;  but  never,  if 
we  understand  him  rightly,  false.  He  was  a  little  too 
credulous  of  sonorous  sentiment,  but  he  was  never,  like 
Chateaubriand  or  Lamartine,  the  lackey  of  fine  phrases. 
If,  as  some  fanciful  physiologists  have  assumed,  there 
be  a  masculine  and  feminine  lobe  of  the  brain,  it  would 


380         ROUSSEAU  AND   THE   SENTIMENTALISTS. 

seem  that  in  men  of  sentimental  turn  the  masculine  half 
fell  in  love  with  and  made  an  idol  of  the  other,  obeying 
and  admiring  all  the  pretty  whims  of  this  folle  da  logis. 
In  Rousseau  the  mistress  had  some  noble  elements  of 
character,  and  less  taint  of  the  demi-monde  than  is  visi 
ble  in  more  recent  cases  of  the  same  illicit  relation. 


THE   END. 


Cambridge  :  Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelow,  and  Company. 


14  DAY  USE 

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